Survival
by ElliQuinn
Summary: If anyone in the world could survive a hail of bullets and a missile strike, it would be John Reese. But that's not to say he survives intact...
1. Chapter 1

**I don't own POI. But if anyone wanted to reboot the series I would be ecstatic if they started here...**

 **Humpty Dumpty**

"Jesus."

Jesse couldn't hear much over the sound of his own laboured breathing and the hiss of his air supply. Couldn't see much, either – not all the dust had settled. The beam of his helmet light pierced the murk to reveal rubble – lots of it – and twisted metal. Glass fragments shot little sparkly reflections back at him.

"Jesus God."

Jesse hadn't been in the Fire Department when the Towers came down. Still in high school back then. And while he knew that nothing could ever compare with the horror and heartache of that day – this must be a little bit like it.

The top three floors of the downtown building had pancaked. Thankfully a fire alarm had caused the building to be evacuated only about twenty minutes before the missile hit it. But it was still up to Jesse and his guys to go looking for anyone trapped. So here he was, point man for the firefighters clawing their way up a miraculously intact stairway.

He reached the landing and made the turn to go up the next flight. No dice. A concrete slab, formerly part of the wall, had canted over and was held in place only by the metal handrail of the stairs. Which was dangerously warped. Jesse held up a hand to stop the guys coming up behind him. He peered at the stairway. "We can't go any further, guys. The whole damn thing's gonna come down any minute now." He prepared to retreat back downwards to the relative safety of the floor below when something caught his eye. Colour, in this monochrome world. Red. Blood red.

"Shit, there's someone up there."

The guys behind him came up. Jesse pointed to the leaning slab,and to the trickle of red coming from behind it. Then it was a slow-moving nightmare as two guys risked their necks inching up to the slab, and gingerly passed straps around it. An exposed beam up above gave them a point to rig a makeshift pulley and after a couple of minutes they were putting tension on the lines. The slab shifted. Behind it there was… a tangle of bodies. And… Jesse could hardly believe his eyes. What the hell was going on up there when the missile hit? Some kind of a gun battle, from the looks. A mangled assault rifle slithered down the stairs and dropped over the edge into the dark. There were at least four guys, black-clad and heavily armed. Dead, of course, crushed into the side of the building when the blast threw them there. Another guy, too. He lay on top of one of the others, cushioned from the full impact by the body underneath him. He differed from them in that he wasn't clad entirely in black, instead wearing a black jacket and red shirt. Then Jesse realised that the shirt was red because of the blood. It was still tricking sluggishly. And dead men don't bleed…

"Hey! We got a live one here!"

Time sped up abruptly. The backpack with the first aid supplies was passed up to them, and then it was a case of getting a line in, blood and morphine, a collar around his neck and a tube down his airway. They got him on a stretcher and then began the careful trip back down the staircase until they reached the less-damaged parts of the building below. Jesse could see the man's injuries. Four, five GSWs to the torso that he could see, maybe more he couldn't. The guy's O2 saturation and BP were way down, pulse weak and thready… _Not much hope for this one..._ but after all the man had survived, they had to try. They had to try.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

"Bloody hell." The ER physician was Australian, not long out of his residency, and he had never seen anything quite like this. "All the King's horses and all the King's men," he muttered to himself as he surveyed the injuries presenting here. Then aloud: "Ummm… Okay, we're gonna need to plug some of these holes first..." He directed his team into action, prioritising the worst of the man's many injuries. Looking on the bright side, he reflected as he began clamping and stitching, if they could put this guy back together it'd be worth a pretty damn good journal article.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The skull fractures were the most worrisome in the end. John Doe's cranium had sustained three major fractures. His jaw was broken in two places. Three broken ribs, one of which had punctured a lung. Six GSWs in his torso, one of which had only just missed his heart. A portion of his liver had to be removed, along with one lobe of his right lung. Eighteen hours of surgery to stitch and patch and resect. His pelvis was in several pieces; one femur now had enough metalwork to set off the average airport metal detector. Both tibias fractured, one simple, one compound. Another GSW had cracked his right humerus. All these injuries were terrible. But the skull, and the brain beneath it… The depressed fracture over the temporal lobe was the most dangerous. There was bleeding, and some swelling. After several procedures to relieve the pressure the neurosurgeon was finally guardedly hopeful. They kept John Doe in a medical coma for nearly six weeks before they dared to bring him gradually back awake. The swelling of his face began to go down as the soft tissue injuries healed. And one day Megan Tillman realised she recognised him.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

He was being wheeled down a hospital corridor for an MRI when they came face to face. Megan had heard Campion, the Aussie guy, boasting about the fantastic paper he'd put forward for _Emergency Medicine_ based on the case; she'd vaguely intended to go visit the patient some time. Somehow she hadn't gotten around to it when she saw him in his bed being pushed along by a cheerful orderly. With those injuries it could only be Campion's Humpty Dumpty. Oddly, it was his his eyelashes she recognised first. He was lying with his eyes closed until the orderly was forced to pull the bed to a sudden stop to avoid her, standing frozen as she was in the middle of the corridor. The eyes opened and she was suddenly certain. No way could she ever forget those eyes.

"John," she said uncertainly. His eyes focussed on her face for a moment before wandering. She could see him trying to pull himself together. The blue eyes focussed again.

"Hello?" he said.

"Um. How are you going?" she asked.

"Oh. Okay I guess," he said after a moment. Then after another moment: "Do I know you?"

"It's me. Megan," she said. She examined his face for any flicker of recognition. None came.

"Oh. Okay," he said. His eyes wandered again.

"Sorry, Ma'am, but Mr Doe was supposed to be over there for his scan 'bout five minutes ago," said the orderly.

"Oh, yes, certainly," said Megan crisply. She stood aside and let them go.

"I'll talk to you later, John," she said after them, but the man in the bed did not reply.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When the call came over his cell Lionel was just about to ditch the paperwork for lunch. He was surprised at the jolt of adrenalin which shot through him when 'Blocked Number' showed on the caller ID. And he absolutely froze in his seat when he heard the voice.

" _Cocoa-Puffs?_ "

"Relax, Lionel. It's me. Not her."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he hissed down the phone.

A chuckle. "Not to be morbid, Lionel, but you saw Root's body. So by a process of elimination..."

"Okay, okay. Finch's Machine. I get it."

"I need you to do something for me-"

"Wait. Wait. What the hell has been going on? Damn near everyone ends up dead, and suddenly you call me up wanting me to do something, no questions asked? Forget it. You tell me what's going on, right from the start, or you can find some other sap to do your dirty work." With a decisive swipe of his thumb, he cut off the call.

Two minutes later the phone bleeped again. 'Blocked caller'. He let it go to voice mail, dumped the phone in his desk drawer, and got up. Lunch. He had been about to have lunch, right?

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan had to wait for the end of her shift before she had a chance to go and find John. He was back up in his room, of course, lying half dozing. With both legs in casts, and one in traction, he wasn't going anywhere much. He was gazing out the window, eyes half closed, those long eyelashes hiding the blue eyes. As she walked over to his bed he stirred a little and grimaced. _Poor bastard. Just about everything must hurt right now._ He seemed to hear her thoughts and pressed his morphine pump. "Ahhhh..." he murmured. Then he looked up at her, seeming to see her properly for the first time.

"They're trying to wean me off this stuff," he said, gesturing with his good hand towards the pump. His speech was a little slurred: the injuries to his face and jaw were still healing. Megan tried not to think about the brain injuries.

"Yeah, you've been on it for a while," she agreed. She pulled out her tablet to access his notes, sitting as she did so.

"So… Doctor… why did you come to see me?"

"Because I know you. Knew you," she corrected herself.

There was a flash of genuine anxiety in his eyes. "So who- who am I?"

She was forced to backtrack. "Actually I don't know much about you. I know your name really is John, but I don't know a surname. Not a real one, anyway. You helped people." She found herself pausing as her own memories welled up and threatened to overwhelm her. "You helped me, once. In a very dark time."

"Tell me. Please." There was a hunger, an uncertainty, a desperation in his eyes.

So Megan sat with him and told him her story – about her sister's rape and suicide, her own need for revenge. The guy who came out of nowhere to stop her making the worst decision in her life.

"You said I'd get my life back," she finished. "You were right. It wasn't easy, but in the end I did."

He was lying there frowning at this. "I can't remember any of this," he said. He looked across again at her face, studying it, evidently trying to spark a memory. She saw the moment he gave up, something a little like despair seeping into his expression.

"There's more, though," she said, trying to encourage him. "A little bit more, anyway. When you, when you rescued me… I didn't know it at the time but you were working with another man. I never knew his real name either, but his first name was Harold. He came into the ER once with some pretty distinctive injuries. And a couple of times he called up asking for favours."

"So… so this guy. He might know more!" For the first time John seemed animated. He grimaced again. The morphine had worn off.

"One last thing. The last time he asked me for a favour it was to put through a prescription for medical marijuana for a police detective – John Riley. So this Riley guy might know something too."

"Or maybe he was me," gasped John.

She looked at him in concern. He was sweating slightly and looked pale. "Pain getting bad?"

"I'm fine," he said with an effort.

"Rate it, please. Ten point scale."

"Three."

"Liar," she observed.

"Look, the pump won't give me any more right now, so there's no point-"

"I'll talk to the nursing staff-"

"They only give me Tylenol," he said. His voice and breathing were more under control now. A slight flaring of the nostrils was the only indication he was hurting. "It's okay, honest. In a couple of hours the pump will let me have some more morphine."

"That's quite a long time," she pointed out.

"I'm not going anywhere."

She snorted a little at that.

"Come and see me again?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah. Yes, of course." She reached out and stroked the salt and pepper hair, growing back from the stubble left by his surgical procedures. "Don't worry. We'll work all this out. Okay?"

"Okay," he whispered.

I'm pretty sure this will be continued….


	2. Chapter 2

**The Man Who Never Was**

The payphone in the lobby began ringing as Lionel walked past it for his lunch break. He ignored it and made his way out of the main doors, turned left and began to walk down the street. Falafel, or a cheeseburger? Another pay phone began ringing as he approached it. He hunched his shoulders defiantly. _Think I'll come around that easily, do ya?_ He waited to cross the road, deliberately avoiding the cyclops eye of the traffic cam. Once he was across the street, another payphone started up. _Falafel, I think. Somehow, it just doesn't seem like a cheeseburger kind of a day._

His favourite stand was a way down the street. A muscle in his jaw twitched a little as he got to one last bank of payphones, which started a chorus of rings as he approached and passed them. There was a queue at the falafel stand, so he got in line. Off in the middle distance he could hear the payphones still ringing, until finally they fell silent. Then a cell phone went. For a second Fusco tensed, but then he remembered he'd left his cell in his desk drawer. _Hah! Out-foxed you there, didn't I?_ But there was a tap on his shoulder. "Excuse me, are you, um, Lionel Fusco?" The middle-aged lady seemed a little confused. Fusco couldn't blame her. "It's just that there's a call for you." She held out her cell phone.

Open-mouthed, Fusco took it from her.

"Are you going to let me talk to you now?" came Cocoa-Puffs' voice.

He growled, wordlessly.

"Look, if you want explanations, cutting me off and not letting me talk to you isn't exactly the most efficient way, Lionel, is it." The Machine's voice was indulgent. He sighed.

"Okay. You win. Just let me get some lunch first, all right?"

"Sure, Lionel," said Cocoa-Puffs. Her voice became conspiratorial. "But you really should choose a different falafel stand. This one only got its hygiene certification by bribing the inspector."

He growled again, causing the lady who owned the phone to step back slightly. Then he cut the call off and handed the phone back to her with a sheepish smile. "Uh, sorry about that. My ex. Y'know?"

He could practically see the waves of relief rolling off her as he stepped out of the line. _Okay. Cheeseburger it is, then._

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When Megan got back to her apartment she tried to sit down and put her feet up. She really did. But soon she found herself pacing around her living area. John. Harold. So… who _were_ they? After staring restlessly out the window she recognised her symptoms and came to a decision. No rest for the wicked… she knew herself well enough to know that she wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else until she'd hunted this one down, found the answer to her question. So she got out her laptop, logged into the hospital's staff portal, and began digging.

October 2011. There he was – Harold Partridge. The prescription she'd written him. And that was it. She ground her teeth in frustration. Where were the x-rays of his neck? She rubbed her temples. He'd admitted to having spinal fusion surgery during the year previous. Sooooo…. She changed databases. The National Health Information Database had the files of every patient in the country… she tried searching for patients who had had Harold's procedure in the New York area in the two years to 2011. Too many results. So narrow the search: white males aged forty to sixty. She leaned back, tugging distractedly at her hair. No-one called Harold Partridge. Actually, no-one called Harold at all. And when she worked through the list there was no-one with injuries quite the same as Harold. He was good at covering his tracks.

Sighing to herself, she got up to walk restlessly around the apartment again. She desperately wanted something, some little snippet of information to take back to John. The look in his eyes as he tried to reassemble himself was heart wrenching. The guy she remembered from that searing conversation they'd had in the diner when he'd persuaded her to give up her revenge… he'd been strong then. Calm and strong like a summer sea. Oh yes, she could remember the thread of pain in what he said. That he'd lost someone too. But now – there was an undercurrent of fear to him which hadn't been there. Uncertainty. Whatever his loss had been back then, at least he'd kept his identity. What had he said? When you killed someone you lost part of yourself. Not everything. Just the most important part. She found herself at her window, looking out onto the street below.

 _So what is it like when you really have lost **everything**? _

She shivered and sat back down with the laptop, chewing her lip. You're smart, Meg. You'll figure it out, she heard Gabby say from the past. Okay. So Harold's medical records were gone. But what about the accident which caused the injury in the first place? _Gotta be a car accident or something – those usually make the news reports, even in a minor way…_ So maybe if she searched for accidents during, say, the second half of 2010, about a year before they'd met...

But several hours later she was forced to give up, a nagging headache grinding her ability to concentrate down to a fine white powder. Which blew away on the wind.. _I just don't really have the skills for this_ , she was forced to admit. _I'm a doctor, dammit, not a private eye._

Rubbing her eyes, she made for some Tylenol.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Lionel expected his phone to call as soon as he got back to the precinct, but it wasn't till he was back in his apartment that evening that it bleeped at him again. This time he took the call.

"Okay. So what is it?" he asked.

"First things first, Lionel. I thought you wanted answers."

"Well, yeah," he was forced to admit.

"So sit down then. This might take a little while."

Obediently he sat on his sagging sofa.

"You might as well put me on speaker," said Cocoa-Puffs. The Machine. Whatever.

Once he had done so, she began.

"You remember that there was a final copy of Samaritan which Harry and John went to destroy?"

"Yeah. Which obviously they did, since we're still here."

"Just before they destroyed it, it managed to upload one more copy to a satellite, where it could wait out the virus in safety. John and Harry needed to get a last copy of me uploaded there too, so I could destroy Samaritan."

"Okay..." Fusco wondered where all this was leading.

"There was one place with the capability of reaching the satellite, which Samaritan was about to destroy by a missile strike. Harry and John got me up there just in time. I was able to destroy Samaritan, but I couldn't save them from the missile."

"Oh. So that was the building that got hit."

"Yes, Lionel."

Fusco considered this. "So how were you able to take down Samaritan? Seems you hadn't been doing so well against it up till then. No offence."

"None taken. Do you remember fighting in the playground when you were a kid?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever bite anyone?"

"No, of course not!"

"Why not?"

"Well, because you just don't _do_ that."

"And do you remember how John used to fight?"

Fusco opened his mouth to reply, and suddenly found himself swallowing a lump in his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I remember," he mumbled. That shocking no-holds-barred aggression that Tall Dark and Stormy could unleash with no warning whatsoever. And then seemingly stick back in his jacket pocket until he needed it again.

"Well, before Harold unleashed the virus I fought like you. After, I fought like John. I will say, Samaritan got quite a surprise. For a few seconds." Fusco was sure he wasn't mistaken in hearing a vicious glee in The Machine's voice.

"Okay," he sighed, leaning back on the couch. "So what do you want me to do?"

"I need you to deliver a package. That's all."

"Oh yeah? What package? And who to?"

"It'll be waiting on your desk in the morning. Just take it to the address written on it and put it in the mailbox."

"Uh-uh. You're keeping me in the dark again," he complained.

Cocoa-Puffs sighed. "I could tell you, Lionel. But that would spoil the surprise."

Fusco clamped his mouth shut mulishly and glared at the phone sitting on his coffee table.

"Can you trust me? Just for a while?" the computer asked. Gently. In Cocoa-Puffs' voice.

Fusco knew when he was being manipulated. But, oh, what the hell…

"Okay. Okay. For now I won't ask. But this had better…."

"Great, Lionel! I knew you'd help out!"

"Yeah, yeah," he sighed. "Now will you let me get my tie off and-"

"Slip into something more comfortable? Lionel - really, I'm not that kind of girl."

His phone turned off before he could respond to this.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan was on the relatively civilized eight-to-four shift this week, so the late afternoon sun was slanting in John's window when she arrived in his room the next day. He was looking more alert and really quite cheerful.

"Hey," he greeted her.

"Hey yourself," she responded. "You've lost one of your casts!"

"Yup, the arm's pretty much healed. They want me to start physical therapy on it tomorrow. And they're gonna start transitioning me off the morphine pump onto patches instead."

"Yeah, I saw." She'd taken a moment to access his notes during her lunch break. She stood smiling at him for a second before she sat down.

"I was thinking last night about how to track down Harold," she told him. "I tried finding him through the health database, but I couldn't."

"I thought you said his injuries were pretty distinctive? He must be there somewhere. Anyway, can't you remember what he looked like? You said you treated him."

"I treat a lot of people, John. Gets to the point where you remember the condition but not the face," she said a little defensively. "And as to his injuries - yeah, they are distinctive, and he should be there. But it's like he's just been wiped from the system. No trace."

"Huh." John lay back, looking abstracted. Trying to remember? "You know, that does tell us something. He was in the background, when we were working together, right? So maybe he was like, like, the tech support. Someone like that might be able to get in and remove all traces of himself, yeah? Someone good with computers?"

"Yeah. Maybe," she said cautiously. "I got thinking, though. We might not be able to trace his medical treatment, but surely we should be able to find the accident that caused them? Except I tried last night and I couldn't." She gave him a wry smile. "Just not my skill set."

"Mm." There was a silence for a little while. "I dreamed about him last night," John said at last. "At least, kind of..."

"Yeah? Tell me," she said eagerly.

"Well, all I can remember-" he said the words with distaste "- is standing at some kind of a barred gate, like in a prison or something. Grabbing the bars and shaking them. And yelling 'Wait, Harold' over and over. And then next to me somewhere a phone rings. And that's all."

"So did you see him? In the dream?"

"No," he confessed, looking disconsolate.

"Hm." She sat, trying to think of something constructive to say.

"Dr Tillman. Megan. How long does this last?" he asked suddenly.

"The amnesia?' She grimaced. "What does your neurosurgeon say?"

"He said no-one really knows. The brain is poorly understood, and considering the severity of my injuries, blah, blah, blah." He lay looking frustrated. "I guess I should be grateful I'm not in the ground. I think that's what he was trying to get across. Politely."

"Hard to argue with that," said Megan cautiously. He was looking imploring. "Look, I'm not a neurosurgeon, okay? I do emergency medicine. Treat 'em and street 'em. But from what I know of injuries to the temporal lobe, you can expect a period of what they call dense amnesia about the events immediately before the injury. You should experience a gradual recovery. How long that takes – anyone's guess."

"Eh." He sighed and lay back. "Something else I've been wondering. Who's paying for all this?"

"Your medical care? I have no idea."

"Well someone must be. I mean, I'm a John Doe but I'm still getting all the treatment in the world. Another round of surgery on the pelvis coming up, for starters."

"Haven't you asked? You're the patient, it's not like they can keep who's paying a secret from _you_."

"I did ask. They said it was an anonymous donor. That's all they'll tell me."

Megan frowned. "That's… really weird."

"Can you ask around? Or something? I keep wondering… maybe it's another clue. Maybe it's someone from my past, you know, keeping an eye on me."  
"Harold? Or someone else?"

He could only shrug, which made him grimace with pain.

Megan looked at her watch. "I should probably go now," she said. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay," he said quietly.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

It wasn't a package, it was just an envelope. A thin one, too. Fusco thought it was kind of anticlimactic to trudge all the way out here to stuff one envelope in one mailbox in the lobby of a pretty ordinary apartment building in Queens. "There better be a good reason for this," he told the security cam in the corner. Silence. "Yeah, right," he snarled, and let himself out.

To be continued….


	3. Chapter 3

**Word Association**

Megan didn't get much mail these days – who did? But it was always kind of a nice feeling to check the mailbox. That little moment of anticipation: has someone sent me a letter? Probably left over from childhood, when letters were birthday cards or postcards from faraway places. Not demands for payment or notification of mortgage rate rises, she thought ruefully. She turned the key and opened the little metal door. Just one thing – a yellow envelope with no stamp and a preprinted address label. Not exactly sealed with a loving kiss, then. On the other hand, not from the bank… Curious, she peeled it open right there in the lobby.

A single piece of paper inside. A news report, printed off a website.

" **Billionaire's Tragic Death**

Nathan Ingram, the highly esteemed visionary and charismatic founder of IFT, has died. He was 48. His friends and family are overwhelmed by the wave of sympathy and support from the employees who worked with him, as well as from the general public and devotees of IFT's ubiquitous technology. It seems as if no one can get through the day without having an interaction with something, be it their car or computer, that has been touched by IFT..."

Megan's brows drew down. Slowly she closed the mailbox door, locking it without looking as she skimmed the article. Then she noticed the date. September 2010. Her first impulse was to get her phone out and call John, but then she realised that he had no phone. So it would have to wait for tomorrow. Anyhow, she could spend tonight doing a little digging. With a light step, she made for the stairs. In the corner of the ceiling, the security cam regarded her impassively.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The next day when she arrived up at John's room she was running much later than usual. She'd gone out to make some purchases before coming up to see him. He was lying with his head to the side, one arm over his eyes. Out of traction, now, too. When he heard her footsteps he twitched a bit. The arm came down and he looked at her, blinking a little. His smile flicked on and off like a failing light bulb.

"Oh. Hi. I didn't think..." he trailed off.

"Yeah, sorry I'm late," she said. She dumped her shopping on the chair next to the bed. "I got you some stuff."

"You what? Megan, Doctor Tillman, you didn't have to-" he was looking embarrassed and pleased all at once.

She waved away his protests. "Never mind, you can pay me back some time. Here." She passed a phone over to him. "Just a burner, but we can keep in touch now. And…." She was pulling a much larger box out of a carrier bag. "...here. You can start pulling your weight a bit more." She gazed at him with mock sternness. He put the phone aside, took the box and pulled one side open. The laptop inside was cushioned with a variety of packaging, and they made quite a mess of the small room as they pulled it all out. Kind of like Christmas morning, she couldn't help thinking. Once she had cleared it all away they plugged the laptop in and it booted up. It took quite a bit of fiddling with the bed and the table to get him into a comfortable position, but finally they had him propped about right so he could reach the keyboard at the right angle.

"The hospital wifi really sucks," she apologised. "But it's better than nothing."

He seemed a bit overwhelmed by it all. "Megan, this is too much. I can't-"

"Yes you can. Time to start doing your share, John." She had devoted quite a bit of thought to how to slide these gifts past him, especially the laptop. "You've got a lot more spare time than I do. Time for you to start doing some research of your own."

"Research? On what?"

She shoved the remaining trash off the chair onto the floor and sat down. "Look what came to me in the mail yesterday." With a flourish, she pulled out the piece of paper with the news report of Ingram's death and passed it to him.

"'Billionaire's Tragic Death'," he read slowly. He looked a question at her.

"Look at the date. September 2010. The Ferry Bombing."

"You think this is Harold? But he's dead."

"But it fits, John. What if Ingram survived? If he went underground for some reason. He'd have the tech background to erase his treatment from the records and then stay off the grid."

"So we're not looking for Harold Something. We're looking for Nathan Ingram." John looked intrigued. "You might be on to something there." But then he frowned. "But there was my dream. I was yelling for Harold."

"That might have been just from my telling you that name. Just suggestion. Or maybe he called himself Harold when he was dealing with you." She suddenly felt less certain.

"There must be some connection somewhere," he said quietly. He glanced sharply at her. "Wait. This came in the mail?"

"Yeah."

"So who sent it? Why?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea."

"Huh." He lay there, looking at the ceiling.

"Oh yeah," she said suddenly into the silence. "Another thing. I asked about who's paying for your treatment."

He looked interested again. "Yeah? Did you find anything out?"

She spread her hands. "I'm really sorry, John. Nada. They clammed right up on me and told me that it was an anonymous donor, and the payments were being made on the condition that it stayed anonymous. From everyone, including you."

He pursed his lips and laced his fingers behind his head. "I'm not sure whether that's good news or not." He sounded puzzled.

"Someone's looking out for you, that's for sure," she encouraged.

"Yeah. Yeah," he sighed. "But who?"

POI*POI*POI*POI*

A week went by. Megan got used to dropping in on John after her shift. Then she rotated off the eight-to-four and onto the four-to-midnight, and so her visits happened before her shift instead. He was putting the laptop to good use. Watching Netflix if nothing else, she thought wryly. Two days into her stint on nights John went in for his latest round of surgery, inserting pins and clamps to stabilize his pelvis. Most of his other injuries were healing quite well, but pelvic fractures, she knew, were painful and slow to heal. The morphine pump reappeared for a couple of days, and he was groggy and irritable. She sat by him in the middle of the night after she came off shift the day of his surgery. He was restless and seemed to be hallucinating from his meds, tossing his head back and forth on the pillow. "Bear! Laat vallen!" he said sharply. Then: "Root! No! Harold? Harold!" Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. "Will you stay with me? Just for a little while?" he whispered. Megan was pretty sure he wasn't addressing her, and she went in search of the night nurse. John wasn't Megan's patient, but she made sure his pain relief was tweaked a little and the disturbing symptoms eased. He fell into a sodden sleep, and she left to go home.

The next day he was better, but not very talkative and she didn't stay long. But by the third day the morphine pump had gone again and he was looking a lot more alert. Megan felt a wave of relief as she put her head around the doorframe. "Hey."

He looked up from the laptop and smiled. "Hey yourself."

She came into the room. "You're looking a lot better today."

He flicked his eyebrows up. "Thanks. I think."

"What are you up to?" she asked.

"I got thinking about our dead billionaire. I've been trying to find a connection."

"Any luck?" she asked, interested.

"Hm. Nothing much yet. He was head of IFT, which he started fresh out of MIT. Made a helluva lot of money off it. But then he shut it down for seven whole years, between 2002 and 2009. And in 2010 he was killed."

"So…?"

John closed the laptop. "So if there's a connection, it has something to do with whatever he was doing during that seven years."

She smiled at his confident tone. "And you know this how?"

"I just do." Still that confidence. He leaned back with his fingers interlaced behind his head and smirked at her. "Besides, why would whoever it was send us that news clipping? Someone's pointing us towards Nathan."

"You may be right," she admitted, sitting down in the chair. "Hey, uh, have you had any other dreams the last couple of days?" she added casually.

"Not that I can recall. Why?"

"Oh, the night of your surgery I stopped in after my shift since you were still in the OR when I got here. You were, well, you were hallucinating. You said some stuff."

His brows drew in. "What stuff?" His previous good humour was wiped away, replaced by wariness.

"Well, you said 'bear'. And something in another language. German, maybe? Only a couple of words. And then you said 'root'. You called out for Harold a couple of times. And then you asked someone to stay with you. You… you were crying then," she forced herself to finish in a matter of fact tone.

He was looking completely mystified. "Bear. Root. Harold." He said the words quietly over to himself. She saw his expression grow inward and his forehead wrinkle as he searched for some meaning he could attach to them. He looked up at her again. "I can't remember anything about those words. But they have …. _feelings_ attached to them."

"Feelings?" Her own forehead was wrinkling.

"Yeah. Like, like… almost like a _flavour_."

"So… what flavours do you get?"

His hands opened and closed helplessly. "I'm not sure I can put it into words."

She had a moment of inspiration. "Let's try word association. I say them and you say the first thing that comes into your head."

"Okay," he said doubtfully. He lay back and closed his eyes. "Okay. Go."

"Right. Bear."

"Brave hond," he said, and his eyes flicked open in surprise.

Megan was as surprised as he was. "Braava what? What language was that?"

"I have no idea. But quick, try another one."

"Root."

"Comrade."

"Harold."

"Friend."

"Nathan Ingram," she tried, on an impulse.

Silence. "Nope. Nothing on that one." He sighed and opened his eyes.

Megan suddenly realised her shift was about to start. "Damn. Damn, damn, damn. My shift is beginning." She shot from the chair, gathering her bag as she did so. "Sorry, John, duty calls, see you tomorrow..."

She left him still with an abstracted look on his face.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The next day she found him sitting up with the laptop again. He glanced up at her as she entered and then continued to type rapidly.

"You're really quick with that thing," she observed.

He paused in what he was doing. "Yeah. I guess I am."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find out more about the Ferry Bombing. So I got into the NYPD's old records about it."

"They wouldn't be public access, surely?" she said, startled.

"Well, no, but it wasn't that hard to get into them. The firewall wasn't that challenging, I've seen worse…" his voice trailed away as he realised what he was saying. He looked in something approaching confusion at the screen in front of him. "How do I know this stuff? Where did I learn it?"

She sat down. "You and Harold, or Nathan, or whoever he was – you helped people out. People like me. I think you must have been watching me for a while before you, um, saved me. I guess you needed computer skills for that."

"Yeah, but you said I took this Benton guy away. Made sure he never raped anyone again. That wasn't computer skills."

"Nooo..." she agreed.

"What did I do to him?"

Megan was silent for a long time. John was looking at her worriedly.

"He never came back, did he." He said it quietly, as a statement.

"No. No, he didn't."

"Megan. Did I kill him?"

She had no answer for that. None at all.

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

**Good Guy, Bad Guy**

Megan had gotten into the habit of checking John's vitals during her meal break at around eight in the evening. He wasn't her patient, so strictly speaking she shouldn't be doing this without his permission, but she was pretty sure he didn't mind. _I_ _really must_ _ask him about it next time I see him_ , she decided as she called up his file on her tablet. Crap. His temp had rocketed up and they'd added another antibiotic to complement the routine prophylactic ones. Post-operative infection. Her brow was furrowed as she pocketed the tablet and got back to work.

In the end she didn't feel quite happy heading home after her shift without checking in on him, so she made her way up to his room. He was asleep, but restlessly so, his hair plastered onto his sweaty forehead. His hands twitched and he muttered. "Harold. Harold! Wait!" And then, "It's okay. Pay you back. Pay you back." She sat down in the chair. Some small sound must have penetrated his sleep; he woke with a twitch and gazed unseeingly at her for a second.

"Meg- Megan. What are you doing here?"

"Thought I'd just come and check in again. Ummm… I was looking at your vitals before and I saw you were spiking a fever."

"Yeah." His eyes were drifting shut again. She was was about to get up and tiptoe out when he murmured sleepily, "Oh God, Meg. What am I?"

She paused, wondering whether to reply, but his breathing had slowed and he was plainly asleep again. _Meg,_ she thought as she left the room. _No-one's called me that since Gabby._

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When she woke in the morning she checked his vitals again, relieved to see that his temp had gone back down as the antibiotic kicked in. They hadn't messed around with him – straight onto the good stuff which was obviously working. She spent the morning catching up on some housework, but after an hour of cleaning she decided that she'd had enough. She got out one of her old notebooks, left over from med school, and sat at the dining table writing everything down she could remember hearing him say, every scrap of information from the Time Before, as she thought of it, when he had been working with the mysterious Harold.

When she got up to his room that afternoon she was very early, to give them plenty of time before her shift started. But she found she need not have hurried - his room was empty. When she swung by the nurse's station to ask, she found out that he was having another cast removed: the simple tibia fracture was healed enough now. Before very long he arrived back, pushed as usual in his bed by an orderly. His smile lit up the room, and Megan couldn't help but respond.

"Another one off," she said, gesturing towards the leg.

"Yup," he said proudly.

"And the infection seems to have cleared, too."

"Yeah, they got onto it pretty fast. Surgeon's happy with the metalwork she put in, nurse is happy with the way the wounds are healing. I'm almost starting to think I might get out of this place one day."

"I'm glad," she said simply. She set her bag down next to the chair and pulled out her notebook. "Time to get down to brass tacks, then."

He raised his eyebrows at this.

"I was thinking last night about all the bits and pieces of information we have. I'm trying to find a pattern."

"Did you find one?"

She ignored the question. "We know you knew someone called Harold. You considered him a friend, right?"

"Seems so," he agreed.

"When I said 'root' the other day, you said 'comrade'. So 'Root' must be a name, not just a, a-"

"-type of beer?" he suggested sweetly.

She gave him a mock glare. "My point is we have two people you knew, or were involved with." She glanced down at the page she had written this on with frustration. "Not that that helps much. I mean, what kind of a name is 'Root'?" She shook her head and went on. "You've got some serious computer skills. Maybe not as much as your friend Harold, who seems to have wiped himself off the face of the earth, but you've got more than me, that's for sure." She came to a halt, chewing her lip. John was watching her, an intent frown on his face.

"I went looking for those words you said when I said 'bear'," she continued. "I think they might be Dutch. If that's what they are, then they mean 'good dog'. So you have, or had, a dog."

"A Dutch-speaking dog?" He looked extremely puzzled at this.

"Yeah, I thought that was strange too. So I went looking. If you type 'Dutch language dog' into Fetch and Retrieve, you get a whole lot of sites dealing with military and police dog training. It seems they use Dutch commands a lot."

John lay there, absently rubbing his arm where the cast had come off a few days ago.

"I'm wondering if you were ex-police, or military," said Megan. "That would explain the dog. And it would make sense if you had this, this partnership with Harold. If he was the tech guy and you were the, the..."

"Muscle," he said tonelessly.

"No! Well, not exactly. If you were the one who worked on the ground. Him in the background, you with the people you guys were helping."

He lay there blinking rapidly, taking it all in.

"I also think you have, or had, some serious fighting skills too. You told me you knew what it was to take a life," she said as gently as she could. "And... we know Benton never came back after you took him away."

His jaw was set as he listened to this, his eyes fixed on one spot on the ceiling. There was a long silence. Finally he broke it. "Could you go now, please?" he asked.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When Megan came off her shift at midnight she stood at the main entrance to the ER debating whether to try to see John again. His vitals earlier had suggested he was asleep, but fitfully. And she didn't want to leave things where they had left them that afternoon. She turned her steps towards the wing where his room was.

When she got up there, there was a subdued light coming from the doorway. She put her head around the door. He seemed to be dozing in the light from the laptop screen. The bluish glow threw his features into relief, shadows cast at odd angles. His eyes flickered open.

"Megan."

She tried a small smile and came cautiously into the room. "I'm a little surprised the night nurse allows that," she said, indicating the computer.

"Sometimes I can't sleep. So I just doze a little with it."

"Hm." She sat down next to the bed. His gaze wandered around the room, seeming to avoid her. She sat quietly and the minutes oozed past. He lay very still. Finally she heard his voice coming softly.

"I keep wondering whether I was a bad person or a good one. If I killed someone, maybe I was trying to make up for it somehow. Was that why I was helping people? But where did Harold fit in? And why was I on the roof of that building? A lot of this-" he swept a hand down his body "- was gunshot wounds. I was in a firefight on a rooftop in Manhattan and then the building got hit by a missile. So was I a good guy? Or a bad one?" He shook his head in perplexity.

Megan sat in silence. Finally she said, "I don't know the answers to any of your questions, John. All I know is that when _I_ met you, you were a good guy. Whatever you were before, or became after – to me, right then, you were _exactly_ what I needed." She found herself swallowing. "So you just remember that, you hear me?"

He gave a tiny nod.

She stood up. "I need to get home and get some sleep. And you need to sleep too. So g'night – okay?"

"Okay," he said very quietly.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

After another two weeks had passed Megan was back onto day shifts. Usually she didn't find the constant change to her sleep patterns to be a huge problem, but this time round she was finding it hard to adjust. One night after tossing and turning for several hours she decided she might as well get up and take care of some paperwork, so she got out of bed, threw a wrap around her shoulders and booted up her laptop. She logged in and started reviewing the notes from the patients she'd seen last shift. After a while she yawned and stretched. Automatically she checked John's vitals. Huh. From the look of his heart and respiration rates, he wasn't sleeping either.

On an impulse she picked up her phone and called him. It only rang a couple of times before he picked up.

"Megan?"

"Hey." She suddenly felt embarrassed.

"Are you okay?" His voice sounded concerned.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just can't sleep."

"Oh." A pause. "Me neither."

"Yeah, I saw from your vitals you were awake so I thought I'd call."

There was a silence. Then: "Well, that has to be the weirdest form of stalking _I've_ ever heard of."

"Oh. Oh, I'm sorry,"she said, flustered. "I didn't think you minded me checking-"

He chuckled. "Just kidding. In a way it's kind of comforting to know I'm being watched. Like I've got a guardian angel."

It was her turn to be silent. "Well, turn about is fair play, I guess," she said at last.

"Thanks," he replied softly.

"Thanks? For what?"

"For reminding me. That I used to do something good. Worthwhile." _Not like now_ hung unspoken in the air.

"You'll get it back," she said. "Just give it time."

Another silence. "Yeah. I hope you're right."

"I know I'm right," she said definitively.

"That's your official pronouncement, Doctor?"

"Yup. And now I'm telling you you need to go to sleep."

"Okay, Doc," he said obediently. "You get some sleep too."

"Night, John."

"Night, Meg."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

"I have another package for you to deliver, Lionel," said Cocoa-Puffs. Fusco raised his eyebrows.

"You mean another thin envelope, right?" he said grumpily. "And why does it have to be me and not the US Postal Service that delivers it?"

"I have my reasons," said the computer.

Fusco grunted in response to this.

"I want you to do things a little differently this time," Cocoa-Puffs continued. "The address is the same, but I want you to make the delivery at exactly 07:32 tomorrow morning."

"Seven-! Dammit, Cocoa-Puffs! I live in the Bronx, I work in Manhattan and now you want me to detour out to Queens… I'm gonna have to get up in the middle of the night to do this before work!"

"It'll be worth it, Lionel. Please trust me. I do have a plan."

"Yeah, sure," he sighed.

"Seriously. You'll thank me one day. Oh, one other thing. Tomorrow – don't get caught."

Fusco rolled his eyes. "Caught by who?"

"By the woman who owns the mailbox, of course. Think of yourself as being like a secret Santa. Just make sure you're putting that letter in her mailbox at exactly 7:32 – not a minute earlier or later."

"Whatever," he sighed. Jeez. Crazy damn computer...

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan was running a little late when she left for work that morning, so she took the elevator to the lobby. She got in and pressed the button. The doors closed, but the elevator refused to move. _Whaaat?_ She pressed the button again, then again and again with increasing annoyance. "God dammit!" She didn't usually cuss, but of all the times for the elevator to crap out...Suddenly with a slight squeak, it lurched into action and delivered her smoothly to the lobby. As the doors opened she could see a fat man with curly brown hair and a cheap suit turning away from the mailboxes. He pushed the entrance door open and was gone onto the street before she could register any more details about him. She checked her watch. _Hell._ _G_ _onna be late anyway…_ whipping out her keys she opened her mailbox. Another yellow envelope. She pulled it out and crossed rapidly to the street doors, ran down the steps and looked frantically up and down the street for any sign of the fat man. Nothing. _What the hell is going on?_ Shaking her head, she set off for the subway and her job. But once she was on the train she pulled the envelope out again and looked curiously at it. Like the last one, a preprinted address label. She opened it up. Inside there was a slip of paper with an address printed on it. Nowhere she knew. Her brow wrinkled. Maybe it would mean something to John. _Someone's laying a trail of breadcrumbs for us. But where does it lead?_

To be continued...


	5. Chapter 5

**Memory**

When Megan got to the hospital the yellow envelope sat in her bag until the end of her shift. She went straight up to John's room. He was lying as usual with the laptop on the table in front of him, his brow furrowed. He glanced up as she entered.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey yourself," she replied. She nodded at the laptop. "What are you doing?"

"A couple of things," he said. "Discovering my limitations. I was trying to get into IFT, to see if I could find out anything about their shutdown period."

"And?"

"Their firewalls are a _lot_ better than the NYPD's. But there's something else. I was thinking about that dog, Bear. There are only a few breeds they use for military and police work, so I went looking for pictures, and it worked!" He was really excited now. He pulled up another window on the screen and tilted the laptop so she could see. "I remembered him! That's what he looked like, a Belgian Malinois called Bear!" There was a huge grin across his face. "I can remember being in a park with him, throwing balls. And I'm sure Harold and I walked him, I can remember being on a street at night with Bear and another man. Shorter than me, walking with a limp."

Megan was grinning too. "That's great, John. Better than great – it's amazing!"

"And I think you were right. Belgian Malinois are used by the military. SEAL teams and such. Maybe I was a SEAL."

"See? You're making progress. Maybe some more memories will start coming back, now things are starting to surface," she encouraged him. "Which brings me to this." She got out the envelope.

"Another yellow envelope," he said, brows rising as he took it.

The address didn't mean anything to him, though. She could see disappointment in his face as he shook his head. "Nope. Never seen it before. That I can remember." A grimace accompanying this.

"Something else, though," she said. "I think I saw the person delivering it." She described her glimpse of the fat man in the bad suit.

Now John looked really interested. "Say, Megan. What company provides the security at your building?"

"I don't know, but I could find out I guess."

"Please do..." he said, forehead wrinkling. His attention drifted back to the grinning dog on the laptop screen.

Megan watched him for a couple of minutes; when nothing further was forthcoming she collected her bag. "Hey, I'd better get going, John. See you tomorrow?"

He glanced up from the screen, flashing her a smile. "Sure, Megan. See you then."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The following day when Megan made it up to John's room his bed was gone again. Ah, yes – today had been a red letter day for a while: the removal of the last of his casts, the one on his shattered femur and tibia. This would also signal the removal of the last of his medical monitoring, and pretty soon his transfer over to physical rehab in the Starling Building. She loitered for a while and was almost ready to give up for the day and just leave a note and go home, when she heard the sound of the bed arriving back.

He looked tired but cheerful, and a lot smaller in the bed without the bulk of the cast.

"You good?" she asked, gesturing toward the leg.

"Yep. Physical therapy on it starts tomorrow." He looked triumphantly at her. "And another memory came back!"

"Great! Tell me!" She sat down and waited expectantly.

"It's another one about Bear. I'm somewhere pretty dark, lots of dark wood panelling on the walls. It feels... safe. I think there were lots of bookshelves. And he comes flying out of nowhere and gives me the big doggy welcome. Just about knocks me over. And I'm feeling really happy. Relieved, like something bad has passed and everything's okay again. I think Finch was there too."

"Who?"

He froze. "Finch. Harold. Harold Finch! That was his name!"

"Wow! This is great, John. Things are really starting to come back." Her brow furrowed. "But it'll be a fake name. An alias."

"Yeah. But surely we'll get more pieces of the puzzle. It'll get easier from here, right?"

She was happy to fall in with his hopeful mood. "Hopefully you should experience a kind of bell curve of memories coming back. More and more for a while, and then it'll gradually fall away. There may be some things you'll never recover, but there's no way to know right now." She shot him a professional smile.

"Mm." He lay staring at the ceiling. "Oh, yeah. Did you find out the name of the security company for your apartment building?"

"Oh. No, not yet, sorry. I'll talk to the super tomorrow."

"Mm," he said again. There was a long silence. Finally he said softly, "Tomorrow I get to try standing up."

She smiled. "You're making great progress, John. You're a real miracle man."

"Megan, you still have that address? From the envelope?"

"Yeah. In fact I was going to talk to you about that. I have a day off tomorrow. I thought I might go and check it out."

"Um, not to speak the obvious, but had you thought about checking Fetch and Retrieve first?"

She gave an embarrassed smile. "Would you believe I hadn't thought of that?"

He gave her a derisive 'pfft', smirked, and pulled the laptop from its shelf by the bed. Once he'd started it up they waited impatiently for it to finish booting and he entered the search.

The image it delivered was of a tall, grey building in downtown Manhattan. The bottom storey was festooned with scaffolding and tarps, obviously undergoing some kind of restoration. It was completely foreign to Megan, but as soon as he saw it John froze. "Hell. That looks very familiar," he murmured. Rapidly he changed to "street view". The image on the screen rotated and panned as he manipulated it. He 'walked' it down the street until he found a narrow entrance to a dark passageway which disappeared into the building.

"What is that?" asked Megan into his intent silence.

"The decline of Western civilisation," he said absently.

"What?"

Again he froze. "It's what Harold said once," he said. "It's...it was...oh damn, Meg, it's so close, I can almost remember it! We were walking down that passageway and I said 'What is this place?' and he said 'The decline of Western civilisation.' And then he said some more but I _just can't remember it!_ " His frustration boiled over as he whacked his head back into the pillow with each word.

"Hey. Calm down." She touched his shoulder as he lay breathing deeply and trembling and trying to get a hold of himself again.

"Yeah. Yeah. Thanks." He glanced gratefully up at her.

"Listen, I need to get down to the ER now, but I'll come see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"Don't sweat it, John. The memories will come back. You'll see." She shot him one last smile as she left the room.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan's days off usually saw her cleaning, shopping, catching up on sleep and occasionally hanging out on social media. Today, though, she started by going downstairs and knocking on the super's door. He answered her knock quickly enough, his curious expression changing to a smile when he recognised her. "Doctor Tillman! What can I do for you?"

"Oh, nothing today Charlie. I was just wondering, though – what company handles the security for the building? Like, the cameras and stuff?"

"Security? Oh, that would be Grayling. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason really – just a conversation I had with a patient the other day. He worked for a security company. Thanks, Charlie."

"No problem, Doctor."

Megan filed the information away as she shouldered her bag for her next mission. She hopped a train for Manhattan, and before long she was walking rapidly down the street leading to the mysterious address which seemed to have meant something to John. She made her way along the sidewalk to where the dark passageway disappeared into the bowels of the building. Her nose wrinkled. It smelled strongly of urine and rats, but she turned up it anyway. Part way along she came to the single door which led off it. Locked and padlocked, of course. There was a dirty plaque right next to it. With nothing else to hand, she sacrificed her sleeve to clean the grime off. "NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARIES – LOWER MANHATTAN BRANCH", it said.

She pressed her face up to the glass of the door. Inside it was mostly shadows, but she thought she could discern a litter of books all over the floor, and over to the left a staircase leading upwards into the dark. She got her phone out and tried to take a picture. The flash defeated her purpose at first, but with a lot of fiddling with the settings and holding the thing very, very still she was finally able to get one reasonably good image. Satisfied, she set off for her final stop for the morning.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

City General was one of the oldest and biggest hospitals in New York. A hundred and thirty years ago it had been set in extensive park-like grounds, intended to be an oasis of calm and healing in a frantic, bustling city. Over the years most of the grounds had been built over or sold off to fund new construction. But the physical rehab unit was a low-rise building looking out over one of the few remaining lawns. Megan caught up with John in his new room there.

"Sorry," she apologised to him. "I wanted to be here to help move you, but I kind of got caught up."

"No problem," he replied with a smile. "Not much to move anyhow."

"Yeah," she said, frowning at him. "You could do with some clothes, you know. You can't wear a hospital gown forever."

"No, I guess not," he agreed. "For one thing, I won't want to be bare-ass naked whenever I go for a walk."

Megan smiled at the image of him walking along with the gown flapping open at the back. "Listen. I'll go out and bring you some things, okay?"

He looked deeply uncertain at this. "I… I would like that, Meg. But you've already done so much, and I just don't know how I'll ever pay you back."

"Look, for one thing you seem to be forgetting that you saved me from committing murder," she said heatedly. "You saved my life. Not my physical life, but the person I am. What have I done for you in return? Given you some junk? That's not the same." She smiled at him. "Some debts you can't ever repay, not really. So just lie back and accept that this time, you're on the receiving end. Okay, John?"

"Okay," he whispered.

"Now, before we get too sappy and emotional, take a look at this." She produced her phone and called up the picture she'd taken. "That building used to be a library. Looks like it's abandoned now, though."

He was staring transfixed at the image. "The Library! Yes, that's what it was! That's where I was when Bear greeted me that time! Megan, it was our HQ, our base of operations when we were saving people. Harold and me – he owned the building, he said the city closed half its libraries and it was the decline of Western civilisation, but he bought the building and that was where we based ourselves."

The torrent of words left him lying back against his pillows, gasping. He grabbed her hand. "Oh, God – I can't believe it. He had it all rigged up, off the grid using generators to supply power. There were computers in there and a glass notice board we used to pin pictures to, and my weapons cache-" he came to an abrupt halt. "My weapons. Rifles, handguns, stun grenades. Harold didn't like guns," he said softly. "But I did."

They sat quietly for a moment. "You had six GSWs to your torso, plus one in your arm and another in your right leg," said Megan into the silence. "I kind of hope you handed some of that back, personally."

He glanced up at her with a small smile. "Seems likely I did," he replied.

"Well, then," she said. There was another silence.

"Another thing," said Megan. "I finally asked about the security company for my building. Grayling, the super said."

"Huh. Grayling. For some reason that rings a bell," he muttered. He seemed really very tired, all of a sudden.

"Listen, your first rehab session is this afternoon," said Megan. "How about you have a rest now. I'll go out and get you some clothes and come back after lunch. Okay?"

"Yes, Doc," he murmured.

"Right then. See you later." She gave him a smile. He responded with a weary wave as she left.

To be continued...


	6. Chapter 6

**Hack**

Megan quite enjoyed her shopping spree on John's behalf. She didn't usually spend much money on herself – there seemed no need. A pretty dress once in a while just for the hell of it, but her social life wasn't much to shout about. Books and blu-rays were more her style, but even those she'd learned to be selective about. So there was something quite heady about walking into a store and just going for it. Even if it was mainly underwear, socks and sweats. Still, even though she knew John was going to need to be in soft, flexible clothing for quite a while yet, her eye was caught by a mannequin in jeans and a leather jacket. The urban cowboy look would be good on him, she thought. Or maybe the James Dean look – yes, a white tee and black jacket. Inspired, she found the right stuff. The black leather motorcycle jacket was expensive, and she hesitated for a moment – would it just embarrass him? But then she remembered him in the diner: taking the keys to the van from her and giving her fingers a little squeeze before he rose and walked out of her life carrying both Benton and her revenge with him. The jacket stayed.

Shoes defeated her, though. She'd need to take measurements to get those right. So she finally took her pile of purchases to the counter and paid.

Back at the hospital, John was looking more energetic. Evidently he'd taken her advice and had a nap while she was out. He accepted his new clothes gratefully, even a little tearfully, which they both ignored.

"Do you need any help getting these on? It's nearly time for your first session," she said.

"Uhh..." He looked embarrassed.

"No problem." She went down the hall and flagged down one of the rehab nurses. "Ah, Carla? John needs some help getting dressed..."

A few minutes later he was sitting on the edge of his bed in a pale blue t-shirt and grey sweat pants. Carla, a woman of colour with close-cropped, tightly curled hair, had found a wheelchair and they got him across from the bed and into the chair with no great trouble.

"It's kinda funny not looking up people's noses any more," he said, obviously enjoying the change of perspective after a couple of months on his back. Megan took charge of the wheelchair and pushed him down the corridor to the main rehab room.

Watching John take his first steps, carefully propelling himself along between two rails, was both frightening and exhilarating, for her at least. She watched with an encouraging smile plastered across her face, trying to hide her anxiety. His expression, on the other hand, was completely blank: a mask of concentration as he made it to the end of the bars and then paused while they turned him to go back the other way. After twenty minutes of back-and-forth, sweat stains were starting to appear on the blue t-shirt and he was looking exhausted. He didn't protest much when they stuffed him back in the wheelchair for the trip back to his room.

"Once the surgical wounds have finished healing we can start swim therapy," Carla told them. "That's great for rebuilding muscle and a lot more fun." She winked at John. He gave a slightly wan smile in response. Once he was back on his bed – lying on top of the covers for once – Carla faded out. Megan wondered if she should do likewise. John looked pretty much done in.

"Could you pass me a fresh shirt, please?" he asked. She pulled out a crisp white t-shirt and passed it over to him. He pulled the sweaty blue shirt up over his chest, and then seemed to run out of puff. Megan hesitated, then moved to assist him in pulling the old shirt over his head. His chest and belly were criss-crossed with livid pink surgical scars and peppered with the still-healing reddish pocks of surgical drains, but her practised eye could pick out even older scars underlying them. She pursed her lips, but forbore from saying anything. He followed her gaze. "Yeah, it's quite a mess, isn't it Doc?" He thrust arms and head through the appropriate holes in the new shirt, emerging with tousled hair. This burst of activity seemed to have exhausted him, since he collapsed back against the pillows again.

"You could stand a haircut, you know," Megan replied, gesturing towards his hair.

He smiled wearily. "Probably. It doesn't seem like a high priority right now."

She shrugged. "Your hair, I guess."

They sat in a companionable silence for a few minutes. Finally he spoke. "Doc. Megan. What's my prognosis from here?"

"Physically? With the right therapy your fractures should all heal more or less completely. Given time, and I'm talking a year or more, you should get full function back. I mean, your injuries were some of the worst I've ever seen, but you got some pretty terrific treatment really quickly, though I'll never say that to Campion. His ego's big enough already."

John smiled a little at that.

"Your internal injuries – well, your bowel's about three feet shorter than it was, thanks to all the portions that had to be resected. We took out some of your liver, but livers regenerate, so that's probably not going to be a huge concern. You also had one lobe from your right lung removed. You might find some of your lung capacity has reduced, but personally I think you've got off pretty lightly. All things considered."

"So all I have to do is get my memory back and I'll be good as new, huh?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that. But pretty good, anyway," she said, smiling.

"Mm," he said, and as she watched his eyelids slid shut. She waited another few minutes, but his breathing slowed into the rhythm of deep sleep. Megan smiled to herself, picked up her bag, and quietly retreated into the afternoon sunshine.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan's day off preceded another shift change – onto nights, this time. The midnight to eight shift could be boringly quiet or completely crazy, depending on luck and the phases of the moon. Her first night on was a crazy one, which was probably just as well since now she could no longer stalk John via his medical monitors. Which was a good thing, she reminded herself. She just kind of missed that feeling of connection to him. She dropped in on him after the end of the shift to find him standing in the little cubicle attached to his room shaving.

"Hey," she said as she tapped on his door.

There was a little pause as he scraped a blob of shaving foam off his upper lip. "Hey, yourself," he replied.

"You're doing well there," she said.

"Thanks." He was putting his shaving things away methodically: practised movements which were obviously second nature. Once done, he manoeuvred himself back to his bed using the grab bars attached to the walls and sat down with an "Oof!" of effort.

"So what's up for today?" asked Megan.

"More practice at walking. They're gonna set me up with some weights to help rebuild the arms and upper body."

"Good," she said.

"But I've got plenty of spare time. You wanna come over this evening, before your shift?"

"What, you're asking me on a date?" she teased.

"Only of you think sitting in a hospital room hacking a security company is a date. But to each his own, I guess."

"Wait – you're planning to hack Grayling?"

"That's the plan. I wanna see who's been feeding us clues."

"Put like that, I'm in. Should I bring pizza?"

"Sounds good to me. Pepperoni, please."

Megan brought garlic bread and pepperoni pizza and root beer and Hershey bars for dessert. They made a happy, slightly greasy mess in his room before she cleared away the boxes and wrappers while he got out the laptop again.

"O-kay," he said as he started his hack. She sat by, trying not to distract him as windows bloomed on the screen and lines of code flowed up it. The laptop bleeped and John made an irritated noise, clicked his tongue, paused and began again. More code, more windows… finally a triumphant "Ah-hah!" from him. They were in.

It took more than half an hour of exploration before they found the menu to access security cameras, but then it was a simple matter to call up the footage from the lobby cam for her building.

"Do you remember what time you saw him there?" asked John.

"A little after seven-thirty," said Megan. "I was running late."

They wound the digitized file forward to the right moment and waited for the fat man to arrive. There he was: a dumpy figure shouldering his way through the glass street doors, pulling the envelope from his jacket pocket as he did so. He checked his watch, shrugged, and stuck it into her mailbox with an emphatic movement. Then he did a very strange thing. He paused and looked up, glaring straight into the eye of the security cam before turning and pushing his way back out the doors onto the street. Seconds later Megan saw herself coming into frame, opening the mailbox and then darting for the doors.

John wound the file back to the moment the man gazed up into the camera. His face, a little distorted by the fish-eye lens the camera used, filled the screen. Megan watched as John gazed at the image. His expression was intent; she was starting to recognise the moments when he was sorting through his fragmentary memories, trying to bring some word or image up. Suddenly his face lightened. "That's Lionel!"

"Who?"

"I don't know. But his name's Lionel."

"So you knew him."

"Yes – say his name!"

"Huh?"

"Just say his name, Meg!" He lay back with his eyes closed.

"Lionel," she said.

"Asset!" Then his expression became puzzled. "Partner. Friend."

"Huh," said Megan, a little puzzled. "'Partner' and 'friend' I can understand, but 'asset'?"

"Hm." He looked troubled, and gazed again at the image on the screen.

"I wonder where we can find him, then," said Megan.

John shook his head slowly. "No idea," he said.

"And you can't remember a surname?"

He shut the laptop, lay back with his fingers interlaced behind his head and closed his eyes. "Lionel. Lionel. Lionel," he murmured. After a moment he opened his eyes again. "Nothing," he sighed.

Megan suddenly sat up straighter in her chair. "John. Remember how I told you – the last favour Harold asked of me, late last year, was putting through a prescription for medical marijuana for a Detective John Riley? You said he might have been an identity you had once. You said 'partner' for Lionel. Police officers have partners. Do you think there's a connection?"

Galvanised, he sat up again, opened the laptop and opened another window. "Did I ever tell you you are one smart woman, Meg?" he said without looking at her.

Megan blushed.

It took John about three minutes to get into the NYPD's personnel records. He searched through them for John Riley…

"Oh, my God," he said, his hands frozen on the keyboard. The face staring out at them from the screen was definitely his. Detective Riley's little half-smile gave him an air of cocky self-confidence. He looked fit and healthy, as much as you could tell from the head-and-shoulders shot of his personnel file: his skin was firm and tanned against the crisp white of his shirt.

Megan was crowding his shoulder as she stared at the image.

"He – you – worked homicide out of the Eighth Precinct," she said excitedly. "Check-"

"-I'm already on it," he said, pulling up the 8th's personnel records.

"There he is!" shrieked Megan. "Lionel Fusco!" She was bouncing up and down with excitement. John turned to look at her with an amused smile.

"Go on," said Megan. "Look – his cell phone number's right there. Call him!"

John picked up his phone – then hesitated. "Not yet," he said thoughtfully.

"What? Why?"

"Asset," he said pensively. "You know what kind of people have assets? Operatives do. Undercovers. Spies. Lionel at some point wasn't a friend or a partner. He was an asset. And I… somehow I ended up full of bullets on a rooftop."

"But he must have some answers," she said with disappointment.

"I bet he does. But… I don't know what was going on here. I nearly ended up dead. Lionel will wait a few days, until I have a better idea of what's happening."

Megan looked at him. There was a new expression on his face. He no longer looked lost and vulnerable, just brooding and determined.

To be continued….


	7. Chapter 7

**Catch-22**

"Are you sure you won't contact him? It seems kind of… paranoid not to. I mean, who's out to get you?" Megan's excitement had evaporated, turning to exasperation.

"That's just the point, I don't know who," he bit back. "Think about it, Megan. When I met you I was working with Harold Finch and based in the Library. I'm pretty sure I wasn't a cop then. So something changed. And I don't know what the connection is between Riley and Fusco and the rooftop. Until I know more I'm not going to contact him."

"Well, I think you've got a great Catch-22 going on here, then," she retorted. "You won't contact him until you know more. You won't know more until you contact him."

"I know that trusting the wrong people can get you killed," he said, his brow furrowing. Megan wondered where the hell that came from. Just what _had_ his past been, before he came to work with his friend Harold and his comrade Root and his asset/partner/friend Lionel?

"So how are you going to find out more?" she asked. "Lionel was our best lead."

"First up, I'm going to have a really thorough search inside the NYPD," he said, resuming his typing. "I'm gonna find out all about Detective Riley..." his voice trailed off as he typed and clicked.

Megan watched him a little longer, then realised that time was passing.

"Hey, John. My shift is starting in an hour or so. I'd better go, okay?"

"Okay," he said absently. As she gathered her things to leave he tore his attention away from the laptop screen and twitched a smile. "Meg. Thanks for being here. I couldn't do this without you."

Her grumpiness and disappointment with his caution were still very much present, so she shot him a rather forced smile.

"You're welcome, John."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

She was pretty surprised to get a text message from John at 4 am, midway through her shift. "Please come see me after you finish," he had written. On the way over to the the physical rehab unit, housed in the Starling Building, she composed speeches in her head about the need for him to sleep to aid his recuperation.

When she got to his room he was sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up and his cheek resting on them. The doctor part of her noted with approval how quickly he was regaining mobility in his pelvic area. Apart from that, he looked, well, like shit really.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" she asked him sternly.

"No," he sighed. "No, I didn't."

His eyes looked bloodshot and he was pale of face. She eyed him with concern and sat down in the chair.

"Okay. Tell me."

He was silent for a long time: such a long time she was about to repeat her question when he sighed and pulled the laptop towards him, opening it up.

"I decided last night after you left to take a hard look at Riley. I'm pretty sure that's not my real name. And I wanted to know how it fitted in with Harold. According to his records, Riley started working Narcotics for the NYPD in 2010, which I'm certain is false. He did this and that for a couple of years, then he was was supposedly undercover for two years before he made a big bust and got promoted to Homicide in mid-2014. I can't remember any of that, of course."

"Because it never happened, or because you just can't remember?" she couldn't help asking.

He grimaced. "I don't know." His expression grew inward again, and he ran one finger along the edge of the laptop screen. "So I decided to take a good look at Lionel," he continued. "He worked homicide out of the 51st Precinct for a long time, but then he was suddenly transferred to the 8th in October 2011. Just about exactly the same time as I met you, as it happens." There was a sadness in his expression. Megan's brow furrowed. What was coming next?

"He was assigned a partner at the 8th. This woman." With a flick of his finger on the touchpad, he called up an image. A pretty black woman, her hair tied up in a bun, gazed out of the screen at them with cheerful confidence.

"Detective Jocelyn Carter," Megan read from the screen. She glanced across at John. Tears were making wet tracks down his cheeks.

"What- hey. Hey." She didn't ask if he was okay, since he evidently wasn't. Hesitantly she put a hand on his sleeve.

"You know the stupid thing? I have these feelings, these emotions, but I can't remember why. All I can remember is her bleeding to death in my arms. I can remember the sound of a phone ringing across the street, I can remember the exact colour of the sidewalk, I can remember the smell of her blood. I, I, I – I know she was important. But I don't know _why_." He swiped an irritated hand across his wet face.

Megan thought it was pretty obvious why. "You were in love with her," she said as dispassionately as she could.

"I'm not sure it was as simple as that," he replied. "I can't explain it." He look a long look at the picture before minimising it.

Megan's eyes felt like there was sandpaper behind them, and she could feel the beginnings of a real rip-roaring, fatigue-and-eyestrain headache coming on. "John. Are you okay for me to leave now? I'm sorry, I'm dead beat. I'll come see you again after I've had some sleep."

One corner of his mouth quirked in an attempted smile. "Yeah, sure, Meg. I'll catch you later, okay?"

"You get some sleep too, John." She squeezed his arm, rose, and left.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When Megan got home she collapsed into bed as soon as she'd peeled off her clothes, without even bothering to brush her teeth. She woke to afternoon light coming through a gap in her bedroom curtains. She lay for a few minutes examining the ceiling before pushing herself reluctantly upright. Her thoughts wandered over the conversation that morning. Detective Carter, Lionel Fusco. He'd obviously still been working with Finch even when he'd become Detective Riley. So it still came back to Harold Finch. Finch. Ingram. The Ferry Bombing. She stiffened, and grabbed for her laptop. _Why the hell didn't I think of that before?_ It didn't take very long for her to call up the Emergency Response Team's records of the immediate aftermath of the bombing. She herself had been out of town that day, otherwise she might have been called in to help deal with the flood of casualties… she located Nathan Ingram's file easily enough and was forced to admit that his injuries were not survivable. But then she went back to the list of casualties. Some names had remained as John or Jane Does to this day, she saw sadly – people who had no-one to claim their bodies, no matching DNA anywhere to help identify them. But there he was: among the injured, a single John Doe. A man who had had, yes! Injuries to his neck and hip, not immediately life-threatening – and who had removed himself from the makeshift hospital and disappeared soon after his initial triage. She felt a wave of triumph. "Hello, Mister Finch," she whispered.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When Megan got to John's room that evening he was lying on his back with his fingers interlaced behind his head, looking at the ceiling.

"Hey," she said as she reached his door.

He glanced at her. "Hey, yourself."

"How did your day go?" she asked.

"Not too bad actually," he replied. "I can get all the way along the rails now without needing any help. In a couple of days they're going to start me off with some canes. And the incisions from the surgery on the pelvis have healed enough that I can get in the pool any time I want."

She gave a short nod. "That's good. Really good."

"I've had a couple of flashes of memory about Detective Carter," he said as she seated herself.

"Yeah?" Megan wasn't completely sure she wanted to hear, but if it was important to John...

"A couple of things. Sitting in a diner with her eating. There was one where I think I was hurt and she was helping me into a car. And… there was another one, I think it was after she died because I was out looking for her killer. I remember showing her killer's picture to a couple of guys in a wrecked car but they didn't seem to know anything so I walked away."

"Oh," said Megan.

His face was looking deeply disturbed. "The car was on fire, Megan. I walked away from them while they were still alive in a burning car. And I heard an explosion behind me and I kept walking."

"Oh," she said again.

"Every time I think I might be a good guy..." his voice trailed away.

Megan looked at his features. Sad eyes, frowning brow.

"Does it bother you that you could be a bad guy?" she asked suddenly.

He shot her an incredulous look. "Of course it does!"

"Well, there's your answer, then." She held his gaze. "If you were really a bad man, an evil person – you wouldn't be worried by the possibility. Trust me, John. The fact that you're scared that you might be evil is the strongest evidence that you aren't."

He looked away again after a second, the relief on his face almost painful to see. "Thanks. Thanks," he mumbled.

There was silence for a moment.

"I think I made some progress with Harold today, though," she said. She told him about what she had discovered in the records of the emergency response to the Ferry Bombing. He listened with a slight frown. "Good work, Meg." His smile was still a little forced. Then he took a deep breath. "I did a little more digging too."

He got the laptop and opened it. "Carter was gunned down in the street by a member of a group of corrupt cops called 'HR'."

"I remember, vaguely," said Megan, nodding her head.

John gave an irritated snort in reply. "Of course, I don't. But there was something else I came across. One of Detective Carter's cases from 2011. She was a homicide detective, but she got real invested in chasing a vigilante. They called the guy 'The Man in the Suit', because he always seemed to wear a black suit with a white shirt. Seems he would step out of the shadows every so often, shoot someone in the kneecaps, and save the day. He always seemed to know when something bad was just about to happen." Megan felt her eyebrows rising.

"There's a security camera still of him here," John added blandly. He tilted the laptop.

"Oh, my," said Megan faintly. There was no escaping the resemblance between The Man in the Suit and the guy sitting on the bed next to her.

"Sounds like he had more close calls than you could shake a stick at," he said. "For a while the Feds were chasing him too, and there's a note she made about someone called Mark Snow, from the CIA, who was asking questions too. I tried getting into the FBI, but their network security is _way_ beyond my abilities. Let alone the CIA."

"And 'The Man in the Suit' was you."

"Seems so." He paused, shaking his head. "The more I try to figure things out, the more bizarre it gets. How does it all fit together? But one thing I know – she was… a dear friend. Somehow she went from trying to arrest me to, to… something else."

 _Yeah, and I know what else_ , Megan thought. She was still thinking about Harold. "So it seems Harold Finch escaped the Ferry Bombing and went off the grid. Somehow the two of you teamed up and started intervening to save people who needed help. If he was injured, not physically fit, then it would make sense for him to enlist someone who was." She paused, thinking hard. "Harold refused treatment, just slipped away and disappeared. So he was scared of something. Running from something. And here's another thing, John. Why did Lionel send us a news clipping about Nathan Ingram's death? Any news story about the Ferry Bombing would have done. I still think there's a connection between Harold and Nathan, even if they're not the same person."

"Something else, Megan," said John. "How did he even know to send something to you? You're not my doctor. It's just a coincidence that you found me at all." He frowned at his computer screen, still displaying the fuzzy image of The Man in the Suit. "Something's behind him. Something or someone."

"You said that according to Carter's investigation The Man in the Suit always seemed to know when something bad was going to happen. Maybe that was what Harold was doing. The tech guy, scanning all those cameras, watching for criminals." She paused. "No, that makes no sense. He'd need a lot more than just cameras to figure out what was going to happen. Like with me..."

"Maybe he had a really smart computer to predict what was going to happen," said John. "Or maybe he was psychic. Or a time traveller, or something." He closed the laptop. "Eh, it's late. I need to sleep, and you need to get over to the ER." He gave her an appealing look. "Will you come see me again after your shift?"

"Sure thing," she said.

To be continued….


	8. Chapter 8

**Intervention**

Megan's shift that night was very quiet. She went and had a lie down in a dark room, though she was never quite sure whether this helped or not. Now that she had finished her residency she no longer had to work crazy hours, and simply staying awake through the shift seemed less confusing to her body. Half an hour into her doze her phone went. Muzzily she dug it out and answered it.

"Megan. Meg, thank God." It was John. He sounded distraught.

"John. Are you okay?" She was sitting up, blinking herself awake as fast as she could.

"I...I'm not sure. I had a memory flash a little while ago. A really strong one."

"You mean you remembered some more stuff? Great!"

There was the huff of a humourless laugh at the other end. "Wait'll you hear it." Silence.

"Well, I'm waiting," she said impatiently.

"I was in Paris with a woman. Kara, her name was. I killed two people, gunned them down in a bar, while Kara took care of the cameras."

There was a silence.

"Still think I was a good person?" he asked roughly, and then the phone went dead.

 _Damn it,_ she thought. _This can't go on._ Since she was awake now anyway, she got up and went back out into the ER. It was two hours until the end of her shift, and so she took a stack of admission forms and offered to help file them. The nurse-administrator for the shift was suitably grateful and the routine work didn't stop her thinking.

 _He needs answers._ Waiting for the memories to come back by themselves, trying to piece together the clues – it wasn't good enough. His physical recovery was going extremely well, but the hoped-for cascade of returning memory had not so far occurred. _Still just bits and pieces. And without a context to put them in..._ Lionel had the answers, some of them at least. _But maybe he's right to be paranoid. Those people on the rooftop certainly did their best to kill him. Maybe there are more where they came from._

Maybe. But they'd had quite a while now to arrive at the hospital and shoot the place up. Nearly three months since John had arrived in the ER more dead than alive. She had a sinking feeling that John wouldn't see it that way. _He's not going to_ _go_ _see Lionel. Too cautious. Too paranoid._ But… what if she went to see him herself?

She paused in her filing. Maybe he was right. Maybe something bad _would_ happen if his continued existence was revealed. But with nothing to connect Megan Tillman to John Doe it wouldn't come back on him… maybe she could at least go and talk to this guy. She gave a short nod to herself. Yes. This morning, without further delay. _Because I think this has gone on long enough._

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Before she went anywhere after her shift, Megan made the hike over to Starling to see John. As usual he was awake, up and shaving, and yes, when he made the ten-foot journey from his tiny toilet/shower area to his bed he made a little less use of the grab bars. His physical recovery was going just fine, she judged.

His face, on the other hand, was pale and drawn.

"Hey," she said, coming into the room and sitting down.

He didn't reply, just gave her a tiny and obviously unfelt smile. "Sorry for phoning you during your shift."

"It's okay, I was just sleeping," she replied.

He looked even more apologetic. "Oh, hell, I woke you up too..."

She waved this away. "Not important."

There was a long silence. "I'm glad you came to see me," he said at last.

She shot him a surprised look. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I'm a murderer." His mouth was set in a thin distressed line.

"Not to me, you aren't."

Another silence. "You can keep saying that as long as you like, Megan," he said softly. "Doesn't change the reality in here." He tapped his own chest.

She gazed at him helplessly. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was like one of those deluded women who wrote love letters to serial killers in prison. But then she shook her head at herself. "John, we don't know who or what you are or were. We just don't have enough information." She reached out and gripped his shoulder and shook it. "Don't you go passing judgement on yourself, you hear? Not till all the facts are in."

He sat motionless for a moment, then took her hand and clutched it hard. "Don't know how I'd make it through this without you, Meg."

"You'll get through, John," she said, gently disengaging her hand. She gave him a smile. "Hey, you're the guy who survived being shot and blown up – you're indestructible, right?"

That brought out a smile – small but genuine.

"Now, you need to get to your physical therapy, and I need to get home for some sleep. I'll see you tonight, okay?"

"Okay, doc," he said, a little more like his usual self. Reassured, she picked up her bag, shot him one last smile, and left the room.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The Eighth Precinct was a brick building on the fringe of the downtown area. Megan climbed the flight of steps leading to the front entrance. Although she'd dealt with plenty of cops over the years – you couldn't work the ER without doing so – this was the first time she'd ever been into a real police precinct. She made her way across to the desk sergeant and asked to see Detective Lionel Fusco. The sergeant gave her a curious glance before picking up her phone. "Can I say what this is about?" she asked.

"Oh." Megan hadn't thought much about this part. "It's, um, it's about an old case he was involved in." She gave a very uncertain smile to the woman, but the sergeant nodded in response and called through to the squad room, or wherever it was that detectives hung out.

After a moment the sergeant nodded and put the phone down. "Through those doors and to your right," she said.

Megan shouldered her bag and pushed through the double doors.

The detectives' room was a big, cluttered area dotted with desks. At 9:15 on a weekday morning there was a hum of activity, lots of people criss-crossing the place, phones ringing and a buzz of conversation. She scanned the area. Over on the other side of the room a curly-haired man in a brown suit seemed to be on the lookout for her. He saw her and rose from his seat to beckon her over.

Seated beside his desk, she carefully put her bag on the floor.

"So," said Detective Fusco. "How can I help you… Dr Tillman, right?"

"I'm, uh, looking for information," said Megan carefully. "Several years ago a man helped me out of a, I guess you'd say, a bad situation." She was watching Fusco carefully as she spoke. He wasn't giving anything away, merely raising his eyebrows and waiting for her to continue. "I think he was the guy the police started to call 'The Man in the Suit'," she went on. "I was wondering if you could tell me anything else about him."

Fusco pulled his eyeglasses off and leaned back in his chair with a smile. "Dr Tillman, I really don't know why you're asking me about him. The Man in the Suit was just an urban legend." His eyes were fixed on her, though – watching attentively.

"I really don't think so, Detective," she replied. "Remember – I was one of the people he helped." Watching him just as intently as he was watching her, she let the silence between them stretch.

Fusco was the first to break it. "I beg your pardon, Ma'am, but I can't help you." He put his glasses back on and prepared to turn back to his paperwork.

"I think The Man in the Suit was your old partner Detective Riley," she said desperately.

Fusco froze in his seat. "What makes you say that?"

"I – the man who helped me wore a suit," she said weakly. "And so did your partner."

Fusco's eyes narrowed. "How do you know anything about my partner?" he asked.

Megan realised with a sinking feeling that she had screwed this up completely. "I'm sorry," she said in confusion. "I shouldn't have come. Please..." she gathered her bag up, rose and retreated as quickly as she could from the busy room.

Back out on the street she walked rapidly away from the precinct. _Shit. What a mess. Why did I do that? I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing…_

"Hey," came a voice at her shoulder. Fusco, breathing a little heavily from his jog after her.

"Please, just let me go," she said. Whether from sleep deprivation or stress she found herself nearly in tears.

Fusco refused to leave, though, matching her pace. "Listen. Riley's been gone three months now. And you suddenly turn up wanting to know all about him? Somethin's going on here."

She came to a sudden stop in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to face him. "Five years ago I was ready to commit a murder and this man suddenly turned up from nowhere and stopped me. Please, I can't tell you why but I really need to know about him."

Fusco stared hard at her, searching her face. Whatever he found seemed to satisfy him, and he gave a slow nod. "Okay. Okay, let's talk."

They continued their walk down the street until they found a small park. Sitting in the sunshine on a park bench, Megan waited for Fusco to say something. He sat next to her, looking down at his hands.

"I had two names for Riley," he said at last. "Actually I called him a whole lotta names. But I had two that've stuck in my mind. 'Tall, Dark and Stormy'. And 'Wonder Boy'."

Megan couldn't help but smile a little at that.

"He was a terrible cop," said Fusco. "One time we were supposed to be following a lead in a murder and he notices some punk snatch a lady's purse. Took off after the guy at a dead run, right down Park Avenue. The perp tries to lose him in the crowds in Central Park, and Riley goes up on a tourist bus – you know, one of those double decker things? - and shoots him in the kneecap. At long range. With half of New York watching." He shook his head.

They sat there in silence for a while longer.

"He was a terrible cop," said Megan. "But was he a good man?"

Fusco gave a wry smile. "He was a pain in my ass. Off on 'sick leave' working side jobs more than he was at the precinct. Had the weirdest set of friends you ever saw – and remember, I've been a cop in New York for twenty-some years." He glanced up at the security camera on the light pole a few yards away from them as he said this. "But he was the best. The very best," he finished softly.

Megan examined his face carefully as he said this. There was sadness there, a deep regret for his lost partner. She made a sudden decision.

"Detective. There's someone I want you to meet."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Fusco shook his head at himself as he parked his cruiser in one of the police spots at City General. Taking time out of his day to go chasing a mystery man with a crazy woman… there hadn't been much of that for the last three months, and he sure hadn't missed it. It was like Riley was reaching from beyond the grave. Yeah, a cold dead hand had punched up through the grass like something from a zombie movie to grab his ankle and pull him down a rabbit hole… He tried to make that seem funny to himself, but gave up.

He followed Dr Tillman along a path leading towards a low-rise building set in a lawn; the signs pointing towards it said things like "Hydrotherapy" and "Physical Rehabilitation". A suspicion began to raise itself in his mind as they walked through the double doors. Tillman led him down a corridor to a room – vacant right now, bed neatly made. She gave a frustrated click of her tongue, darted away to consult one of the nursing staff and returned to pilot him down some stairs to the basement.

They passed through one more set of doors. The smell of chlorine telegraphed to him that they were heading for a swimming pool before they reached the space, all gleaming tiles and stainless steel fittings like a bathroom in an upmarket hotel. Over at the other end of the pool a man was performing some exercise which seemed to involve using his feet to move objects along the floor of the pool, assisted by a couple of physical therapists. Fusco's eyes narrowed as he took a good, close look at the guy in the water.

"Jeez. You have to be kidding me. I mean, you really have _got_ to be kidding." He gave an incredulous sidelong look at Dr Tillman. The man, finished now, was carefully pulling himself up the steps leading out of the pool. He towelled himself off, then an attendant passed him two canes and he began to hobble along the side of the pool towards where they were standing. In his concentration he was nearly level with them before he looked up. There was a flash of utter consternation on his face as he realised who they were. Then he assumed a familiar expressionlessness.

"Hello, Lionel," he said.

Lionel just managed to get his mouth closed so he could say "Yeah, I love you too," with reasonable timing. He was quite proud of that, afterwards.

To be continued...


	9. Chapter 9

**Tete-a-tete**

"I'm going to leave you two to talk," said Dr Tillman. "I really, really need some sleep."

"You don't want to join us?" asked Fusco.

"No, I'm sure John will catch me up later." She shot John an encouraging smile, turned and left them.

Fusco gestured to John. "Uh... need any help there, partner?" Damn, it was amazing how that word, 'partner', came so naturally after all this time.

John drew himself up. "No, I'm fine right now, thanks," he said softly. He continued his progress towards the doors, and Fusco walked slowly along by his side.

"I, we, thought you were dead," he said to John. "I'd'a come looking for you, honest, if I thought there was any hope at all. And Cocoa-Puffs told me you and Finch were both dead..."

John gave him a "who is this crazy person?" look, brows drawing together in bafflement. "Cocoa-Puffs?" They had reached the door; Fusco held it open so John could manoeuvre himself through.

"Yeah, Cocoa-Puffs." Fusco located a security cam, glared at it and said, "You have a real warped sense of humour, by the way."

Now John was looking completely confused. "Listen, Lionel… you should know I got banged up pretty badly three months ago." He gestured to his head. "Skull fractures, among other stuff. There's a lot I don't remember."

"You don't remember about..." Lionel lowered his voice "...The Machine?"

John looked blank. "Looks like you have some things to catch me up on, Lionel," he sighed.

"Yeah. Like, the last five years," Fusco agreed.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Once John had gotten dressed again they walked slowly out of the building and across the lawn. There was a seat in the late morning sunshine and they sat down. Reese – Riley – John lowered himself gingerly onto the seat, seeming to have difficulty arranging his canes. Fusco couldn't help wincing at the sight.

John noticed his expression. "Hey, this isn't so bad. A week ago I was still in a wheelchair. I'm getting a bit better every day."

"So… how bad was it?" Fusco found himself asking. In reply he got a catalogue of injuries which had him shaking his head in disbelief. "Only you, man… I shoulda known that if anyone could have survived what went down that day it would be you."

There was a silence as they sat there, like an old couple soaking up the sun.

"So what did go down that day?" asked John softly. "Who was trying to kill me?"

Fusco smiled a little grimly to himself. "Well, John, there's a system. Listening through every microphone. Watching through every camera." He glanced sideways at the man, but of course he didn't get the joke. He sighed to himself and went on to explain about The Machine. Samaritan. The last time he saw his partner.

"Cocoa-Puffs told me you and Finch had died in the missile strike," he ended with an aggrieved shake of the head. "You got some explaining to do," he added, glaring at a camera a dozen yards away.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," murmured John.

They sat quietly for a while longer.

"Lionel, what was my name?" asked John suddenly.

Fusco chuckled. "Wonder Boy. Bane of My Existence. Mr Happy."

John gave him a pained look. Fusco sighed. "When you were my partner you were John Riley. Before, Glasses called you 'Mr Reese'. But you used a lot of aliases, so I've got no guarantees that Reese was your real name either."

"Oh." The man on the bench beside him, whatever his name was, looked pensive at that.

Fusco tried to imagine what it would be like to not even know your own name and shivered a little. "One thing I can't help wondering," he said, "is that if the damn computer lied to me when it said you were dead, was it lying when it said Glasses didn't survive?"

Reese's eyebrows flicked up. "That is a very good question, Lionel," he said.

They sat a while longer. Fusco was about to suggest it was time for him to go and do his real job when John spoke one word. "Carter."

Fusco looked hard at him. John was staring out across the lawn, carefully not looking at him. "What about her?" he asked.

His old partner turned to meet his eye. "What was she to me?" Reese hesitated and then asked, "Were we lovers?"

Fusco pursed his lips. "Honestly? I don't think it ever went that far. But… there was somethin' between you two, that was for sure. She spent six months chasing you around trying to arrest you. Then you flipped her and she started working for you, same as I was. Except you didn't do either of us the favour of letting us know or anything," he added in a burst of aggravation. "You know she almost shot me?"

John seemed to be trying to tamp down a smile at that, which only made Lionel more annoyed. "The two of you were like… you used to drive her nuts. Carter was always one for the rules, you know? A straight arrow. But by the end… she changed. She saved my ass when IAB was about to pop me. Broke every rule in the book to do it. And when she died, you… well, you went totally off the reservation. I mean, you were half dead yourself 'cause Simmons got you pretty good when he got Carter, but you raised hell right across the city looking for him. And then when we finally caught up with you and strapped you down in a hospital bed 'til you were half-well again, you upped and left as soon as you could stand. I ended up chasing you all the way to Colorado before I could get you back."

"Colorado," said John. He peered at Lionel. "Did we have a fistfight? In the rain?"

"Yup," said Fusco proudly. "I beat you pretty good, too."

"No you didn't. And I was drunk."

"Ah, so you remember some things, then," said Lionel.

"Some. I remember you tried to kill me a few times."

"Youthful indiscretions," said Fusco.

"Heh," a small half-laugh huffed out. "Why were we doing it, Lionel? Finch and me? What made us try to save those people?"

Lionel was silent for a long time. "You know, I never could figure out what got you two started. You saved a lot of people. You saved me, even – I was a dirty cop when you met me. But what started it? You'd have to ask Finch."

They sat for a while longer, until the sun went behind a cloud.

"Listen, I have a day job," said Lionel at last. He dug out one of his cards. "There's my cell number. You call me if you need anything. Okay? Any time."

John hesitated a moment before he reached out and took the card. "Thanks, Lionel," he said sincerely.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

In the end Megan only got about four hours' sleep; on the other hand, tonight was her last night shift for a while – tomorrow she rotated back onto days. She soaked herself under the shower for a long time as a partial compensation for the lack of sleep. At last she was forced to emerge, dry her hair and dress.

This done, she felt a lot more human. She grabbed her phone and her purse and headed out to the hospital. It was nearly eight hours before her shift started, but that would give her time to catch up with John. She hoped his conversation with Lionel Fusco had left him in a better space than when she had seen him first thing in the morning, anyhow.

When she got to his room in the Starling building she wasn't surprised to find it empty again, so she went looking. He was in one of the therapy rooms, working out with some weights. As she strolled up, he saw her coming and returned them to their rack. "How much are you doing there? About three pounds?" she teased.

"Don't knock it," he retorted. "The arm's starting to improve already." Megan couldn't honestly see much difference in the wasted muscles of his right arm, immobilised for weeks in a cast, but she wasn't going to burst his bubble.

He collected his canes and they began the walk back to his room.

"You're in early today," he said.

"Yeah, couldn't sleep much."

"Umm… thanks for going and seeing Lionel," he said quietly.

She shrugged.

"You took a big risk for me. I won't forget it."

"Did you find out much from him?"

"Yes and no. He sure filled me in on the last few years. But he didn't know anything about what happened on the rooftop. And he didn't know how Finch and I got together in the first place. So I still have a lot of unanswered questions."

"Hm."

"I'm still remembering more stuff, too."

"Oh?" After his phone call during the night she wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad one.

By now they were back to his room. He lowered himself carefully onto the bed, propping the canes against the night stand.

Megan sat on the chair as usual.

"Meg, I worked for the CIA. I was a hit man and assassin. I worked with that woman, Kara, and we killed people for the government." He seemed calm as he told her this, though she thought she could detect a little flicker of worry in his eyes.

"O-kay," Megan said slowly. She actually found it hard to believe that John, her John, who had come out of the shadows and persuaded her _not_ to kill… could be the same guy. On the other hand, she remembered his words in the diner... _unlike you, I know what happens when you take a life. You lose a part of yourself. Not everything. Just the part that matters the most._

He was watching her. He went on, "Somehow I left the CIA and ended up with Finch. I still don't remember much about that. I was homeless for a while, living on the streets. I know that much."  
"When you were talking to me you said you'd lost someone close to you," she said.

He was motionless for a second. "I still don't remember," he replied. "But I'm guessing that was part of it."

"So did Fusco tell you what happened on the rooftop?"

"Some. He told me Finch was up on the roof as well. But I've been thinking. All the bodies were accounted for, Fusco said. Someone put in place a massive cover-up, but Finch's body wasn't among them. So maybe he's still out there."

Megan had the feeling he wasn't telling her the full story, so she said nothing. There was a silence.

"I've been thinking, too," said John. "About the future. One day I'm gonna be out of this place. What do I do then?"

She stretched her legs out in front of her. "You want to go back into the vigilante business?"

"I don't know. Can I?"

"Physically, you mean?" Megan was quiet for a moment, organising her thoughts. "I told you a few days ago that your fractures would heal pretty much completely. Your main problem will be decreased lung capacity. You will experience lower energy levels for quite some months yet as your body recovers from the insult it suffered. Total recovery time? You are doing phenomenally well, John. You seem to have a really high degree of resilience, so your recovery will be at the lower end of such things. But it will be at least a year before you're back to anything like your previous condition."

"Mm." He was gazing at the ceiling, considering this.

"Another thing. The tibia and femur in your right leg both have metal rods down the middle holding them together, and your pelvis is held together with clamps and screws. You'll be good for pretty much any normal activity. But leaping tall buildings with a single bound? Your superhero days may be over."

He was quiet again. "After Fusco left at lunch time I had a nap," he said. "I had a dream. I was sitting in a car with Carter. She asked me what I was going to do when the Man in the Suit finally hung up the suit for good."

"What did you say to her?" asked Megan.

He turned a wry gaze to her. "Damned if I can remember." But then his expression hardened. "Anyway, it might not be quite time to retire yet. Because there's still some questions I want answers to. Finch. Is he still out there? What happened to me when I left the Company? How did I end up homeless in New York? And I've got a real strong feeling there's still more to learn about what happened on the rooftop."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Fusco chose the street carefully. Nowhere near either the Precinct or his home. Dark and quiet. No-one around to see him behaving like a total nut job.

"Cocoa-Puffs? You listening?" He stared up into the camera bolted to the light pole.

Silence, apart from a far-off siren.

"Hey, c'mon. I trusted you. You said I'd thank you in the end. So what the hell was going on with the envelopes and stuff?"

Silence.

"I mean, okay, I'm glad Wonder Boy is alive after all. But why did you lie to me?"

Suddenly the phone in his pocket buzzed and he eagerly picked up the call.

"I didn't lie, Lionel. Strictly speaking."

"Oh yeah?"

"No. I said I couldn't save John or Harold from the missile strike. Which is true."

"So why have me delivering that stuff to Tillman? Why couldn't you just send me over to the hospital?"

There was something like a sigh from Cocoa-Puffs. "Because the big guy needs a friend right now. Someone who can be with him every step of the way."

Fusco looked away from the camera for a second. "I'd do that for him."

"I know you'd want to," said the computer sympathetically. "But you have a job and a family. And there's old business between Tillman and John. Believe me, this is the best way for him. Laying breadcrumbs for them to follow has brought them together. What comes of it – well, that's up to them."

To be continued….


	10. Chapter 10

**Excursion**

"How will you ever trace Harold?" Megan wondered a few days later. "If he's still alive, he's more than capable of covering his tracks." She couldn't help thinking to herself that John might be better to simply let it lie. He had enough information about himself to start patching his life back together, surely? But as she watched his face, intent over his laptop screen, she knew that this man simply didn't know when to stop. She supposed she should be grateful. Most people with injuries as severe as his would have given up the fight and died. Maybe his inability to recognise a lost cause was the reason he was alive at all.

"Harold was good," John replied in a slightly absent tone of voice. "But no-one's perfect. Sooner or later he'll make a mistake."

They were sitting outside on the park bench across from the Starling Building. Megan's run of ten day shifts was punctuated with – bliss! - two whole days off. She had slept in this morning, schlepped around her apartment for a couple of hours and then come in to see John. It was only then that the fact that it was a weekend had sunk in: no therapy sessions for him until Monday.

His recovery continued to be amazingly rapid. He had already abandoned one of the canes, and as far as she could tell his upper torso and shoulders had regained nearly all their mobility. The t-shirts she had bought for him only a few weeks ago were going to be too small pretty soon as his muscles bulked up again. The pelvis was always going to be the tricky thing, she knew, but even that seemed to be improving daily. His memories were another story, though – she could always tell when he reached the edge of one of those voids in his mind: the look of mingled exasperation and fear.

"What are you doing there, anyhow?" she asked him.

He sighed. "Checking airline databases to see if Finch turns up on any of them. But there's nothing there." He sounded disconsolate.

"Listen. You feel like taking a trip out tomorrow?" she said, changing the subject.

He looked up from the screen. "Where to?"

"Surprise. But I bet you'll like it."

"Huh." He looked unconvinced.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Convinced or not, the next day he consented to walking with her to the main road entrance to the hospital. An Uber car met them there and whisked them off to Megan's mystery destination.

His brows rose as they arrived. "Well, Meg - I've gotta hand it to you. You were right. I do like it."

They entered the shooting range and she was happy to hand him off to an instructor. She wasn't a huge fan of guns. _I spend too damn much of my time cleaning up after them,_ she thought to herself. But she had the strong sense that his skill with weapons was important to him, a major part of his identity. So maybe getting that back would help him. It was worth a try.

Megan sat herself down in a waiting area behind the indoor shooting gallery: glassed in to keep the sound out and with comfortable chairs. A couple of other women were there, obviously waiting on their men. One had her smart phone out and was flicking and prodding at the screen; the other one was sitting with a stoical expression on her face knitting. Megan turned her attention to John.

And it was certainly an education, watching him carefully placing the earmuffs on, taking a stance and methodically squeezing off a dozen rounds into the target at the other end of the range. He shook his head at the spread of the bullet impacts, though his instructor seemed pleased. More than pleased, actually: a little impressed. Megan contented herself with analysing the lingering stiffness he was obviously experiencing in his hips and right knee. After a while he returned the handgun and picked up his cane from where it was propped against the wall. The instructor said something to him, and he looked interested. Then both men came back through the glass sliding door, bringing the thunderous noise of the range in with them for a second until it slid shut behind them.

"You want to come along with us out to the outdoor range, ma'am?" asked the instructor. "John wanted to use a rifle."

"Okay," said Megan. As they went, the instructor snagged a pair of earmuffs for her off a rack.

"I'm not just sure how this'll go," said John to the instructor. He gave the man an apologetic smile. "I might need a little help getting down..."

In the end it _was_ a bit tricky getting him down lying prone. But once he was set up with the big Barrett M-107 he looked… natural.

He seemed almost bored with the target at four hundred yards. Eight hundred yards out and he was concentrating a little harder. It wasn't until the target was almost lost in the distance at twelve hundred yards away that he seemed to have any sense of challenge, and even then he rattled off six shots with hardly a pause between them. The instructor glanced down at him from where he had been tracking John's shots with a telescope. He was frowning slightly. "I'm really sorry, John. Your first hit was a bull's-eye. But you only seem to have hit the once."

From his position on the ground, John rolled slightly on one side and smirked up at him. "You wanna bet on that?"

The instructor smiled politely. "There's only one hole in the target..."

"Of course there is," said John gently. He held out a hand to Megan and she helped him lever himself up. "We can go on down there and check if you like."

Frowning, the instructor said, "Ah, no, I'm sure-"

"Oh, but I insist," purred John. So they made the long hike down to the target. It took a while, since John still wasn't up to anything much like a normal walking pace yet.

When they got down there, the instructor removed the paper target. The hole – right in the centre – was a little on the large side for the size of ammo John had been using. And buried in the soft earth of the butts exactly behind the hole were his six bullets.

The walk back to the main building was a very quiet one.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan called another Uber ride for them to go back to the hospital. John was looking really quite smug, she thought – but also about ready to drop in his tracks. He folded his long body into the back seat of the car, leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes.

"Tired?" she said to him, despite the answer being pretty obvious.

"Mm." He didn't open his eyes. "You know, I'm going to have to get a job," he said after a moment.

"A job? Why?"

"Well, you keep doing all these nice things for me. How'm I going to do anything nice for you?"

Megan sighed. "I thought we'd been through all this. More than once, actually."

"Doesn't change things though. I was just doing my job, Meg. You don't have to pay me back."

"Suck it up, John. I'm doing this for you because you're a friend. If I decide I don't want to any more, I'll stop."

He grunted at that. They were nearly back at the hospital when she said musingly, "You said that once, when you were dreaming."

"Said what?"

"'Pay you back'. It was a couple of nights after your pelvic reconstruction surgery. Remember, you got an infection? I checked in on you and you were febrile. You must have been dreaming, because you were saying Harold's name over and over. And you said "It's okay. Pay you back, pay you back" a couple of times too."

"'Pay you back all at once'," he said very quietly. His eyes were open again.

"Huh?" She glanced at him, frowning.

"I said it to Harold. When I was up on the rooftop. I said I was going to pay him back all at once."

"What for?"

He was frowning too, that look of intense concentration back on his face as he searched his brain for some image, some impression that might help. But he huffed out a long, frustrated breath and shook his head. "No. It's gone. I can't remember."

Just then they pulled up outside the hospital. Megan paid the driver and got out, passing John his cane as he wallowed up out of the back seat. Together they strolled up towards the Starling Building. As they approached it John glanced up at the stainless steel letters over the main entrance which spelled out the building's name. A look of wonder came over his face. "Starling..." he breathed. "Finch, you sly dog..." he suddenly began hobbling as fast as he could towards the entrance doors.

"What? What's up, John?" Megan found herself trotting to keep up with him.

"Finch! Starling!" he tossed back over his shoulder at her. "He loved to use bird aliases, Meg! And he was a billionaire! So who do you think funded this building?"

POI*POI*POI*POI*

"He was a billionaire, he was a tech genius connected to Nathan Ingram, he funded this building...I can't believe I've been living in it for weeks… if I can get into the hospital donor records I might just be able to find him..." John was almost babbling as he got out the laptop and booted it up.

"Whoa. Whoa, John. Do you think he won't have covered his tracks with this as well?" Megan hated to burst his bubble, but she really couldn't see much hope of finding the elusive Harold this way.

"It's worth a try, Meg," he replied, though his excitement seemed to abate a little.

He didn't seem to have a lot of trouble getting into the hospital's records, but as Megan sat next to the bed he seemed to deflate a little. "Damn. Damn. Yeah, it was him all right. But look, Meg." He turned the laptop towards her. "See this payment? Came out through his asset manager. John Rooney."

"So?"

"So Rooney was an alias he created for me. I've done a great job of tracking myself down." He gave her an ironic smile.

"John," said Megan suddenly. "While you're in there – take a look at who's paying your bills."

"Good thought," he agreed. Some more clicks and swipes, and he brought up a new screen.

"Ernest Thornhill," read Megan, mystified. "Is he something to do with Thornhill Industries? Why is he paying your hospital bills?"

"Huh," said John, gazing at the screen before getting rid of it with a swipe of the tracking pad. "Concerned third party?"

Megan let this ride for a moment before commenting quietly "I know you're not telling me everything, John."

He was still for a second. "Just trying to protect you, Megan."

"From what?"

He gave a slight double take, shrugged and smiled, closing the laptop. "Cut me some slack, Meg. It's kind of a reflex."

Megan returned the smile, and they sat quietly for a moment. "I wonder," she said thoughtfully. "Are we approaching this wrong? Think, John. If Harold survived the missile somehow, he must have disappeared somewhere. So where would he go? If you were Harold, where would you run to?"

He lay back, closed his eyes and rested his head on the pillows. "I might have to think about that one, Meg." He sounded very tired. She sat quietly with him for a while longer, and when his breathing deepened and slowed she got up and tiptoed out.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When Megan got home she dug out her cell, weighed it in her hand for a moment, and then put in a call to Fusco.

He picked it up quickly enough.

"Detective? It's Megan Tillman here."

"Oh, hi, Doc. How's John?"

"Still recovering well. Physically, anyhow. But he's pretty fixated on tracking down Harold Finch."

"Yeah, that's Tall, Dark and Stormy all over. He and Finch were practically welded at the hip. I'll tell you this much for free, as long as there's even a hint of a hope Finch is alive he won't stop looking."

"I was afraid you'd say that," she said.

"Well, everyone needs a hobby," said Fusco.

She snorted at this. "He's not telling me everything, though. Says he wants to protect me – though God knows from who."

"Yeah, that's John all over. He and Finch were birds of a feather where information was concerned. Never gave away anything if they could help it."

"What's he not telling me?" she asked.

There was a long pause from Fusco. "You know," he said slowly, "those two kept me in the dark about some really important stuff for a helluva long time. And I was pissed as hell at them, but now all of a sudden I'm wondering if they weren't right. Keeping things from me for so long."

Megan grimaced, though she knew he couldn't see it. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, it's kind of like that old saying about how you can't unring a bell." There was a silence from him for a moment. "Listen, Dr Tillman-"

"Megan," she said. "Just call me Megan."

"Okay, Megan. John's secrets are his to tell. If you really want to know, you need to ask him."

Megan let out an aggravated sigh at this.

"But if he won't tell you, and you really can't let it lie – call me. I'll tell you as much as I can."

And with that she was forced to be satisfied. For now, at least.

To be continued….


	11. Chapter 11

**AWOL**

The next few days went by in a quiet routine: Megan worked her eight-to-four shifts and dropped in on John afterwards for an hour or two, while John spent his days attacking his physical therapy with a single minded determination which Megan had seldom seen before. Fusco came over one evening bearing pad Thai and they holed up in John's room listening to Fusco's work stories. Megan had to admit the guy was a great raconteur with an eye for the quirky, memorable or downright strange. She chipped in with a few work stories of her own, like the one about the guy who had arrived in the ER one time with a light bulb stuck in his rectum. By his own account he'd been changing a light bulb in the nude, slipped and fallen on it. Fusco had especially enjoyed that one; John had listened to it as he had listened to Fusco's stories, with quiet attention and a slight smirk. For whatever reason, he didn't offer any stories of his own, though.

He seemed to have relaxed his efforts to find Harold. Maybe he'd decided to put the energy into getting well again. And it was true that his recovery was proceeding apace. The day of her last day shift – back onto evenings tomorrow – Megan arrived not long after 4 pm to find him in the pool swimming laps. When she got chatting to his physical therapist the woman told her he'd been in the pool almost the whole afternoon with only one break, steadily swimming. "I'm not sure what's driving him," she observed. "But he seems almost… obsessive... about getting his physical abilities back."

Megan shrugged at this. "I think he's hoping that if he gets his body back into peak condition, his memories will return too."

"Ah." The physical therapist watched as John completed another lap, pushed away from the pool wall and settled into his steady freestyle stroke. "Well, who knows? He might even be right." She checked her watch, made her excuses and left Megan alone.

Megan sat down on a chair by the wall, waiting for him to finish and get out. She picked up a magazine someone had left there and idly flicked through it, then cast it aside in favour of a game of Sudoku on her phone. Three games later (on the 'Hard' level, too) there was movement in front of her. She flicked her gaze away from her phone. John was standing there towelling himself off. She ran a professional glance up his body. His right leg was still a little smaller than his left, the wasted muscles obviously on their way back but not quite there yet. His surgical scars looked like a map of a major river system, or a huge and complex rail junction. But his grin lit up the room and she couldn't help but return it. He was still breathing heavily from his exertion, but he got out a cheery greeting. "Hey, Doc! Good day?"

"Hey, yourself," she replied. "Yeah, not too bad. I hear you're in training for the Olympics or something."

"Trying to build my stamina again," he said, throwing the towel around his shoulders. His eyes strayed to the magazine sitting on the chair next to her, and he froze: the familiar expression which accompanied a returning memory flickered across his face. He reached for the magazine. " _The Boroughs Magazine_ ," he whispered. "Oh, my God." He picked it up almost reverently.

Megan looked at him in bafflement. He was staring at the cover, and he suddenly squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he shot a burning glance at Megan.

"C'mon, Meg. We need to talk."

When they got back to his room she waited outside while he got dressed, and then went in and settled into her familiar place on the chair beside his bed. He picked up the magazine from where he'd dumped it on the night stand. "You asked a while ago where Finch would go if he survived the missile. I know where that is now."

She felt her eyebrows lifting. "Okay. So spill."

He paused, seemingly to get his thoughts straight. "Harold was a very private person, and it took me a long time to figure this out. But before he went off the grid, he had a fiancée. A woman called Grace. She was an illustrator, drew the covers for this magazine."

"Ah." Megan could see where this was going.

"When things really went pear-shaped here in New York, Harold got Grace as far away from here as he could. Set her up with a job in Italy. If he survived, that's where he'll have gone. That's where I have to go."

"Are you kidding? You can't leave yet, you're still only half recovered!" she protested.

"I have to go there, Meg!"

She gazed at him in frustration. "Will you be reasonable? You only just got rid of the cane. You still have a nap in the middle of the day, for God's sake. If Harold has managed for the last four months, he can manage a few weeks longer."

She could see John glaring at her, but she returned his glare. With interest. "I will not be a party to you placing your recovery and your future health in jeopardy," she stated firmly.

He continued to gaze at her, but finally he looked away. She reached out and took his hand. "John, I want you to get the answers you need," she told him gently. "We're on the same side here. But you have got to pace yourself."

His mouth was set in a hard line. Finally he sighed and laid his head back against the pillows. "Okay, Meg. You win." He looked disconsolate.

"Look, don't sweat it," she said in an attempt to encourage him. "At the rate you're recovering, it'll only be another couple of weeks before you can move out of here. We'll revisit things then, okay?"

"Yeah, but that's another thing I'm kind of worried about," he confessed. "Megan, what am I going to do then? What am I going to do with myself? And what do I do when Ernest Thornhill isn't paying the bill any more?"

Megan was silent in response to this. She had been turning this problem over in her mind herself for a week or two now. Just what did ex-vigilantes do for a living when their careers were over? No answer had so far suggested itself. "Maybe you could go back to being a cop," she suggested.

He looked unconvinced.

"We'll think of something," she said, trying to be encouraging. "I mean it, John. You have to remember: you have friends. People who care about you. We'll figure something out."

That elicited only the tiniest quirk of a smile from him, but Megan was happy to settle for that.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When she got home Megan moved about her apartment restlessly. She put her dishes from breakfast into the dishwasher along with today's lunch box, poked about in her refrigerator listlessly before dumping some suspect leftovers in the trash, and finally admitted defeat. She pulled out her phone and called Fusco.

Voice mail. "The Fuscinator" promised to call her back. Great. She threw herself onto the couch and glared up at her ceiling. When Fusco still hadn't called by the evening, and his phone was still sending her to voice mail, she gave up and went to bed.

The next morning Megan had nothing much to do until her shift started at four pm, so once her refrigerator was clean and she'd changed her sheets she gave up and went in to the hospital. As she passed the reception desk in the Starling Building, Carla, the senior nurse, waved her down. "Dr Tillman. Mr Doe asked me to give you this." She held out an envelope.

Megan felt suddenly cold. She took the envelope. "He's discharged himself, hasn't he," she said to the nurse.

"Yes. Just this morning," said Carla.

"Hell. Hell, shit, damn," she said expressionlessly. She gave a tight smile to Carla. "Thanks, Carla."

Turning away, she opened the envelope. A handwritten note on plain paper. Terrible writing, she thought, though not as bad as her own.

 _Dear Meg,_

 _I really hate to do this to you. I know you'll think I'm ungrateful, and really I'm not. But you have to understand, I need to get to Harold. I need answers, I can't rest until I get them. I'll talk to you again when I get back to New York. Thank you again for everything you've done for me._

 _Your friend always,_

 _John Reese_

She crumpled the paper up in her hand and dug her phone out. Another call to Lionel, which went through this time.

"Lionel? It's Megan. Can you get over to the hospital right now? Meet me in the ER. John's gone AWOL."

There was a curse from the other end of the phone. "Okay, sure thing, Megan." Wasting no further words, Fusco ended the call.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Her boss was not pleased. Not at all.

"Jeff, you know I hardly ever take leave. But I have a family emergency and I simply have to go."

"What family emergency? You don't have any family!"

She clamped her jaw shut and simply waited him out.

"Okay," he grumbled at last. "How long do you need?"

She chewed her lip. "I'm not sure. But at least two weeks."

"Two weeks- _two weeks?_ " Jeff was back to nearly tearing his hair out.

"Oh, c'mon, Jeff. No-one's indispensable."

He stared at her with exasperation. "If it was anyone but you, Megan, I'd say no. You know that, right?"

"Thanks, Jeff." She bestowed a radiant smile on him.

As she emerged from Jeff's office she spied Fusco's bulky form arriving through the double doors from the waiting area. He looked grim, but his face lightened as he caught sight of her.

"Megan. What the hell's going on?"

She grabbed him by the arm and towed him out of the ER onto the steps outside.

"Yesterday afternoon he had another surge of returning memory. He figured out where Finch is likely to be, and he's gone after him."

"Oh, great. So where's he headed?"

"Italy, I think. But I have no idea where."

"Italy? Why Italy?"

"He told me last night that Finch had had a fiancée called Grace. She ended up in Italy, and John seemed sure that Finch would go there to find her if he survived the missile."

"Okay. First things first. How's he gonna pay for all this?"

"I don't know. But you know what he's like, Lionel. He's very resourceful."

"You can say that again," sighed Lionel. He seemed to be thinking. "Okay, we know he only left a couple of hours ago. And we know he's heading for Italy. So let's get back to the precinct. I can go looking for airline tickets for Italy bought today. Maybe we can catch him before he leaves."

That was exactly what they did, and it didn't take Fusco long to locate the information he needed. "Shit. There's a ticket for Rome bought this morning by a John Rooney... it must be him. But the flight leaves JFK in about fifteen minutes. We've missed him."

"Can't you put out a BOLO on him? Get him pulled off the flight?"

Fscuo leaned back from his computer terminal, pulling his reading glasses off in what she could now see was a habitual gesture.

"You sure you want me to do that?" He paused for a moment. "Seriously, Doc – is he a danger to himself? Like, is something inside gonna burst or bleed or whatever? In your professional opinion."

She gazed at him in annoyance. "Well, no. But he's not fully recovered. He doesn't have the physical stamina to go running all over Italy looking for his lost friend."

"So he's not a danger to himself, and he's not a danger to anyone else, I'm pretty sure."

She was feeling really frustrated now. "Lionel, I can't just let him throw himself off a cliff like this. He can't do this by himself."

"Tall, Dark and Stormy was never much good at admitting he needed help. Trust me on this, your best bet is to just go after him."

Megan considered this. She'd been well aware that this was probably going to be how it panned out – that was why she'd gone off and demanded leave after all.

Suddenly Lionel got up out of his chair. "C'mon. Let's walk."

"Where to?"

"Somewhere that's not here. I think there's some stuff you really need to know now."

To be continued….


	12. Chapter 12

**Rome**

They left the precinct and headed off down the street towards the little park where they had talked a week or two back. When they got there they sat down on the same park bench.

"Okay, so you know Finch was a real genius. Good with computers," said Fusco. "In fact, he was so good with computers he built himself this system for preventing terrorist attacks. Well, not himself. The government."

"Okay..." said Megan.

"Thing is, the government wanted to keep it secret, so they tried to kill him, and Finch went off the grid and disappeared."

"Well, that explains why he erased himself so thoroughly," said Megan. "But where did John come into it?"

"From what John told me – _when_ he finally told me – the computer could see all kinds of stuff. Not just big crimes with huge casualties, but little ones too. The government wasn't interested in individual murders, just mass casualties. For some reason Glasses decided he needed to get out ahead of those individual murders, so he hired John to help him."

"The Man in the Suit," said Megan. "That was how he always seemed to know when something was about to happen."

"Yeah. When Finch and John started working together, John pulled me in to help." Fusco was quiet for a moment, then added "I wasn't a willing recruit. I was a dirty cop John coerced into helping out. I even tried to kill him a couple of times. But over time… working with Glasses and Wonder Boy and their weird friends… changed me."

Megan sat feeling the sunshine on her face and taking this in.

"So do you know how he ended up with multiple GSWs on a rooftop?" she asked.

"I'm getting to that," said Fusco. "Finch's computer system was called The Machine. But a few years after Finch built it, someone built another computer, called Samaritan. It wasn't friendly like Finch's computer. It tried to take over the world, and Glasses and John were trying to stop it."

"Pfft. You're kidding me," said Megan uneasily.

"No shit, Megan. I don't know what went down that day, not in detail. It was to do with getting a copy of The Machine up to a satellite to destroy the last remaining copy of Samaritan's software. I'm not sure why John and Glasses were both up there on the roof. But whatever Wonder Boy was doing, he was trying to save the world. And since we're all still here, it looks like he succeeded, too."

"You mentioned some weird friends," said Megan after a moment.

"Yeah. One of 'em's still around somewhere. She got the dog, by the way. You knew they had a dog, right? But she's not much for communicating. And...this is where it gets even weirder. The craziest of the whole lot 'em was a woman who called herself Root. I won't even get started on the story of how she ended up mixed up with them. But she was killed not long before the whole thing went ka-boom with the missile and all. Except The Machine seems to have started using her voice. Which is real creepy, believe me."

"Wait, this thing talks to you?" Megan looked hard at Lionel. He _looked_ sane enough.

He caught her expression. "Yeah, it sounds crazy. But it's true." He looked over at a security camera on a light pole and called to it. "C'mon, Cocoa-Puffs. Show her I'm not nuts."

There was a long pause. Then the phone in her pocket buzzed. Fusco let out a sigh of relief.

Megan picked up the call.

"Nice to meet you, Megan," said a woman's voice on the end of her phone.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

"O-kay," said Megan slowly. "Nice to meet you, too." _Whoever you are._

"I'd advise against getting a dog," said the woman on the phone chattily. "Unless you're okay with finding a place with a yard. Apartment life's not good for them, in my opinion. Now cats – a cat would be a lot happier."

"What? How did you know-" Megan began.

"In fact, even with a yard, are you sure you'd be able to give a dog the attention it would need? You really need to think the whole pet thing through, Megan."

"Whoa. Stop. Just stop," said Megan. She took her phone away from her ear and stared at it.

Fusco was watching with an amused smile. "Don't worry," he said to Megan. "You get used to it."

Hesitantly she put the phone back to her ear again.

"I'm sorry – I shouldn't have freaked you out, Megan," said the computer more seriously. "it's just that you're going to need my help if you want to catch up with John."

Megan couldn't think of a response to this: she simply sat staring at her phone. It sighed, tinnily. "Put me on speaker, Megan, so we can all talk."

With slightly shaking hands Megan did so.

"Okay, John's flight is about to leave JFK. I can arrange for it to be delayed and get you on board if you like, Megan. But you'll need to make up your mind quickly."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan pulled her boarding pass from her bag as she approached the gate. Getting to the airport had been one of the most surreal experiences of her life. Fusco had transported her in his cruiser, and every single traffic light between the Eighth Precinct and her apartment had glowed green for them as they approached. She collected her passport and threw a few of the bare necessities into a bag, then walked back down to the lobby. As she exited the building a car pulled up at the curb and a man got out, handed her an envelope with her tickets and a big bundle of Euros in it, smiled, and got back in his car to drive away again. Then it was another magical run out to JFK. Fusco dropped her outside the terminal and waved goodbye, and she turned and went in the doors. A check-in counter opened up just as she approached it, and then she was through to the gate having barely broken stride.

The flight attendant glanced at her boarding pass and conducted her to her seat in first class. The dark-haired man she finally sat down next to glanced up from his magazine at her and did possibly the best double-take she had ever seen in her life. If she hadn't been so angry with him, she would have been grinning like a loon. As it was, she simply held his eye with a stern look. "Hello, Mr Rooney," she said icily.

To give him credit, he recovered pretty fast. "Finch's Machine at work, right?" he said quietly.

"So it would seem," said Megan.

An announcement came over the cabin sound system, thanking the passengers for their patience and informing them that the software problem which had caused this delay had been remedied and that departure was now imminent.

They buckled their seatbelts and tried to pay attention to the safety announcements. Then they were airborne. "Uh... would you like the window seat?" John murmured to her at last.

"No, thank you. The aisle is fine," she replied tartly. His chagrined smile was balm to her irritated feelings, though. "What did you think you were doing, discharging yourself like that? And how did you even get hold of the money to get here anyhow?"

He let his head sink back onto the deliciously comfortable headrest. "I dug up a stash in Central Park which gave me cash and identity papers."

Huh. Ex-CIA guy. She supposed it would make sense that he'd have some kind of emergency supplies hidden somewhere. "So what do you expect to do once we get to Rome?" she asked.

"I got on AirB'n'B and rented us a room," he said, eyes closed.

"Wait, what? _Us?_ You knew I'd come after you?"

His only reply was a long, slow smirk.

"Well, I hope it was a twin room," she said at last.

His eyebrows rose. "Of course it was, Meg! What do you take me for?"

 _I'm just not sure, sometimes,_ she didn't say to him.

Temporarily exhausted by the emotional ups and down of the day so far, she allowed her own head to relax back. "Why did you do this, John? I thought we agreed to leave it until you were well again."

He turned his head towards her. "You agreed. I didn't." Seeing her frown he added, "I'm sorry, Meg. But I have to do this."

She let out a sigh. "I got your note."

"Good." He was looking tired too. "I really was going to get back in touch with you when I got back. If you didn't come."

"I'm glad," she said. His face was only a few inches from hers.

"We're close, Meg," he said softly. "I can feel it. Not much longer and then I'll know. And then..." his voice trailed off and he turned his head away and closed his eyes.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When they landed in Rome Megan was not very surprised to see that John had no luggage aside from his laptop, retrieved from the overhead luggage locker. He had slept for much of the flight, so he seemed fairly fresh, all things considered, as they cleared the airport. It was 4 pm local time, but her body was insisting it was late at night. The taxi which ferried them into the middle of the city was not terribly clean and smelt faintly of cigarette smoke.

When they got to the pension John had selected she refused to allow him to carry her case up the stairs. Three flights up was going to be too much for him, she thought, and the bag wasn't heavy. It was true that by the time they got to the top he was panting a little, but he certainly seemed energetic enough. The room was indeed a twin one, two beds with colourful counterpanes separated by about four feet. She was grateful to flop down on one of the beds for a few minutes before rousing herself enough to go brush her teeth. When she got back John was sitting cross legged on his bed, laptop in front of him.

"I remember Harold got Grace a job, but I can't remember where. And I know he set up a new identity for her. Grace… Something." He sounded way too alert to want to go to sleep yet, which was a pity since she herself was feeling jet-lagged and dead beat. Which was an unwelcome surprise given she was used to having her sleep patterns messed with.

"Okay," she said, yawning openly and hoping he would get the hint.

"Luckily I know exactly when she arrived, so if I can just…." his voice died away as he typed and clicked.

Megan pulled her pillow over her head.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

The next morning she woke after a disturbed night's sleep to find him sitting up in bed just as she'd seen him when she fell asleep the afternoon before.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asked muzzily.

"A bit," he said absently. "I've found her, Meg."

"What? Really?" She was sitting up, much more awake.

"Yeah. Grace Ellsworth. I'm pretty sure that wasn't her original name, but remember Finch set her up with a new identity to keep her out of Samaritan;s clutches. She's artist-in-residence in Mantova. She taught art in Florence for a couple of years and then got this fellowship or something when Mantova was named Italian Capital of Culture this year." He was looking tired but triumphant.

"How are we going to get out there? I'm not legal to drive in Italy, and even if you are there's no way I'm getting in a car with you right now."

"I was just checking rail timetables – we can be there in four hours."

"No," she said firmly.

"What?" He frowned at her.

"Not to be rude, John, but you didn't bring any spare clothing. You haven't showered in a couple of days and I can locate you in the room with my eyes closed. If you turn up there looking like you do now, you'll frighten the horses."

"Oh." She could see him resisting the urge to sniff his own armpit.

"Shower," she said firmly. "And some new clothes."

To be continued...


	13. Chapter 13

**Suit**

Oddly, now that his goal was in sight, John seemed much calmer. He was content to allow Megan to pilot him into a couple of clothing retailers and help him select some trousers and shirts, though he produced a credit card, from his buried stash no doubt, and insisted on paying for them himself. By lunchtime he'd even relaxed enough to let her talk him into taking a look at the ancient Roman Forum. They wandered through the area, well below the present-day ground level, before emerging back up amongst the tourists and street vendors and garbage of the modern city. On their way back to the pension, they were strolling along the Via Palestro when suddenly he stiffened at her side. "Oh, Meg..." he breathed. She followed his gaze to a sign over a doorway. "Gianni Atalier", it said in plain lettering, white on black.

"What?" she asked, but he was already heading for the door and so she followed along. Inside, the receptionist seemed to recognise him. "Ah, Mr Wiley! So good to see you again," he said with a broad smile.

"It's good to be back," John replied with an easy grin. "I was wondering whether Gianni might be able to help me out with a little problem I have. I have an occasion to attend tomorrow, and I'm in need of a suit."

The man's brows drew in. "Tomorrow? I will need to consult… please, take a seat." He gestured them to a well-appointed waiting area and withdrew.

"John!" hissed Megan. "What is this place? And what do you need a suit for? And who the hell is Mr Wiley?"

He turned and gave her a tiny smile. "Right now I'm just winging it, Meg. But… this is right, somehow. Trust me, you'll see."

After a few minutes Gianni himself arrived. He was short, grey haired and sported a large, hooked nose. "Tomorrow? This will be difficult," he said. "But for you-"

"Ah, actually, this afternoon would be better," John interrupted him.

"This afternoon? Please, Mr Wiley, this is not some Hong Kong sweat shop." Gianni looked visibly upset.

"I have great faith in you," said John.

"Eh...for anyone else, this is impossible. You understand this? Impossible! But come, come, come. We will measure you and see what can be done..." He was ushered out back, and so for half an hour Megan cooled her heels and played more Sudoku on her phone. When John emerged he was looking cheerful and grabbed her hand to tow her out of the place and back onto the street.

"What was that all about?" she asked as they resumed their stroll.

"You'll see," he said, smirking. "We've got about three hours to kill. I think the Trevi Fountain's not far. Let's go take a look."

The fountain was simply amazing. Marble sculptures, splashing waters, the gorgeous Baroque buildings surrounding it… it was just a shame there were so many people, Megan couldn't help thinking. But they managed to jostle their way through the crowds and threw their coins in the fountain before John towed her back down the street to a restaurant. Pasta and salad and pastries and coffee; they paid extra for a table on the street. Then it was back to the atelier. This time she was allowed backstage once John had put on his new suit.

 _Wow_ , was all Megan could think. The crisp white of the shirt contrasted with the sable black of the jacket… and all that swimming had certainly worked on John's shoulders and biceps. He filled the suit out to perfection. Gianni looked on benignly. As John withdrew to change back into his casual clothes, the atelier winked at her. "Beautiful, no?" he murmured. It was hard to tell whether he was referring only to the suit.

By the time they had finished at the atelier's it was too late in the day to contemplate the trip up to Mantova. They had dinner at a restaurant and then turned in for an early night. For the first time Megan felt awkward, climbing into bed four feet away from John. She had always resolutely ignored his status as male, unless she was thinking in medical terms. And she flattered herself that she was smart enough not to mistake his emotional vulnerability over the last couple of months for, for… anything else. They were friends. She felt real affection for him, having gone into this owing him a huge debt, and having watched his courageous struggle to find himself again. Now he seemed almost there, physically and mentally. Maybe it was time for her to step back, allow him to go free.

But when it came to the point… she wasn't sure she wanted to let him go. _You don't know nearly enough about him,_ she told herself. _He's a good person – but those things from his past he told you about… he's a killer. You're a healer._

He was a killer once. Was he still a killer? She thought again of the women who wrote to murderers. And there was whatever had been between him and the police detective, Jocelyn Carter. _Who wants to compete with a dead woman?_ No, she was stupid to allow herself to start thinking in these terms. She rolled over in her bed and closed her eyes.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Roma Termini was one of the largest railway stations in Europe. Megan felt like an ant among the scurrying crowds of people: tourists from all over the world, Italians and local citizens all using the station – a transport hub whether you were trying to travel across Europe or merely across town. Their journey would take them to Verona in the first instance; then they would change trains for the trip to Mantova.

She had been slightly surprised when John had put on his new suit that morning, but she supposed it would be easier to transport that way. And there was no denying a little surge of pride on John's behalf. He did look _damned_ good in it. She was more than a little relieved to see that what she was starting to think of as the Reese Effect was not confined to herself alone. Although he seemed oblivious to them, Megan could see plenty of admiring glances from the female half of the population going his way. And more than a few from the male half too, come to that.

His physical recovery was more or less complete, she could see. There was evidently some lingering stiffness in his right knee which gave him the merest trace of a limp, and he still needed to rest frequently. Time would hopefully erase those problems. As to his mental state.. _._ Today would be immensely important. She began to feel nervous.

Their seats in first class were comfortable, though not quite on the level of the plump, plush seats of the airline's first class cabin. They relaxed and watched as the train pulled out of the station, picked up speed and then settled into a soothing "thud-swoosh, thud-swoosh" rhythm as the view out the window changed from city to straggling suburbs to countryside.

Megan studied John's face. There was something different about it this morning. More serious. Well, that was to be expected. But there was a… stillness to him. An impassive neutrality, as though he'd retreated somewhere deep inside himself and was just sitting, poised and watchful. She wasn't entirely sure she liked it.

"You look different," she said, gesturing to the suit.

He roused himself from his reverie and shot her a smile. "Yeah, I always liked this look," he replied.

"You've remembered some more stuff," she said.

He sighed. "Yeah."

There was a silence. She broke it. "Good stuff? Bad stuff?" _C'mon, talk to me!_

"A bit of both."

It was like pulling teeth. "Like that tailor yesterday?"

That drew another small smile. "Yeah, Gianni. Finch recommended him, said he was the best. And it just seemed appropriate to turn up on Finch's doorstep in my real clothes."

"Your real clothes? So what's your other stuff?" She shouldn't feel... threatened like this.

"My working clothes, then," he corrected himself.

Megan was quiet for a few minutes. "Once you've talked to Finch you want to go back to work, then?"

He gazed out the window. "What else would I do?"

"I'm sure we can think of something," she said helplessly.

"Like what?" He seemed openly scornful. "Megan, you spend your days saving people. Helping and healing. What if that was taken away from you? What would you become then?"

She was opening her mouth to reply when she saw that flash of returning memory in his face. He suddenly slumped back in his seat, averting his gaze from her. "Oh, my God," he whispered.

"John. John?"

"You remember how I told you that I'd lost someone?" he muttered. "Well, I just remembered." He got up from his seat. "Sorry. Sorry, Meg. I just need..." he retreated down the carriage, nearly colliding with a woman and her toddler. With a muffled apology, he made it past them and was gone.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

 _Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it_ , Megan thought. She considered getting up and following him, but her gut instinct said no. Something had just reappeared in his consciousness, bobbing to the surface like… like what? That was the question, wasn't it. Like a corpse. Or like some piece of flotsam from a lost vessel. She considered the analogy, not sure she liked the direction it was taking her. Whatever John had just remembered, it was plainly important. And devastating. He needed some time by himself to process it.

When half an hour had gone by, though, she started to become concerned. So she got up and made her way along the train. At least it didn't take long to find him. He was sitting at the bar with a glass of wine in front of him, turning it in his fingers and gazing into it. She slid onto the stool next to him.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to get drunk," he murmured. He slightly undercut his own words by raising the glass and taking a long sip.

Megan didn't reply. She took a look down the wine list and ordered herself a glass of pinot gris.

"Is that how you usually cope? Getting drunk?" she asked, once her own drink had arrived.

He gave a little sniff. "I've been known to." That remoteness, the disconnect from the world around him – it seemed stronger.

"You wanna talk about it?"

There was a long silence. "Not particularly."

 _Damn. I was afraid of that._ She took a sip of her own drink. _Time to fight dirty._ "Well, if that's so, when we get to Verona I'll be leaving you."

"What? Why?" He seemed genuinely shocked; good.

"Because it looks like my work here is done. You're going back to what you've always been – whatever that is. Great. The patient has recovered, no need for the doctor any more."

"But Meg-"

"Uh-uh. Don't you 'Meg' me. You can't have it both ways, John. I'll be your ally, I'll walk with you every step of the way. But you can't turn me on and off like a faucet. You've been letting me inside right up till now, and you think you can suddenly just stop? Screw that!" She wasn't quite sure where the tears in her eyes were coming from, so she tossed almost the whole glass of wine down in one gulp.

He was looking at her in astonishment. "Meg, I – I don't want to hurt you!"

"Good, 'cause I don't want you to hurt me either. And I don't want you to hurt yourself, because that hurts me, and..." she became hopelessly tangled. The glow from the alcohol suddenly hitting her system wasn't helping either. She took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, let's just go back to our seats and then maybe we can talk. All right?"

"All right," he said quietly. He looked completely stunned, gazing at her as if he'd never seen her before.

They rose and walked back down to their seats. Megan slid into hers and he folded himself into his own seat opposite her. She raised her brows expectantly.

He looked down at his fingers, and began.

"I was a soldier, Meg. I joined the army for reasons which aren't important now. I was good at what I did. The CIA noticed, and recruited me. I worked for them for years. I killed for them. I thought I was doing the right thing. Protecting my country. Protecting people like you from the bad guys. 'Cause the world is full of bad guys, Meg. And I was one of the people who stood between them and you." His voice was very low, almost a whisper. She was suddenly reminded of the diner, the quiet intense man sitting across from her. She wondered if she should take his hand.

"Before I joined the Agency, when I was still just a soldier, I met someone. The first time I ever felt like that for another human being. I was going to leave the army, leave it all behind. But then the Towers came down. I re-upped instead. She wanted to wait for me but I walked away instead."

Megan decided to hell with it, and took his hand. He seemed to appreciate this, and squeezed her fingers.

"Years later when I was working for the Agency, she called me. I could tell there was something wrong. She was married by then, but there was something wrong and she needed me. I wanted to drop everything and go to her, but the Agency sent me on a mission to China instead. And while I was there they burned me. I nearly died. By the time I made it back to the States she was dead."

There was a long silence. "And then?" she asked. She squeezed his hand.

"And then I went and beat her abusive husband to death with a poker, dissolved his body in lye and went to live on the streets in New York. And got drunk a helluva lot."

Another long silence. "But that's not where the story ends," she said.

"No. Finch found me. Said I needed a purpose. So I started working for him, saving people. I was going to kill myself, Meg. I was on my way to do it too, but Carter found me and then Finch. I got into a fight on the subway and got arrested and she looked at me like I was a person who was worth saving and then Finch sprung me from the police and offered me a job. It was like, like..."

"Like the sun coming up after a long night," she said quietly.

"Yeah! Yeah, that's exactly what it was like." He looked at her, frowning a little. "How did you know that?"

She thought back to the diner again, to the drive back to the city in his car after he'd taken Benton away, and hauling herself into bed and waking up to a new day the next morning. "I know because that's exactly what you did for me, John," she said softly.

To be continued...


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Sorry I'm a bit late up with this chap. I've got a head cold and I'm feeling sorry for myself and I can't concentrate... :-( But here it is anyway...**

 **The Artist's House**

Mantova had a small town feel to it after the size and bustle of Rome. The sun was hot on Megan's shoulders as they emerged from the train station. She wandered along in John's wake towing her suitcase over the uneven cobbles. He was striding out purposefully, his own bag slung carelessly over his shoulder. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"I looked up about the artist in residence program," he replied over his shoulder. "It comes with an apartment in some place called the Mantegna House. Some famous Renaissance artist's place. So I guess that's where we'll find Finch." He noticed how far behind she'd dropped, and slowed to accommodate her pace.

"Wouldn't it be better to find somewhere to ditch our stuff first?" she asked with a touch of irritation.

"Oh. Yeah. I guess so." He seemed suddenly to become aware of his surroundings again. He had his phone out in a second, prodding and swiping at the screen. "Okay," he said after a moment. "This one looks good." He changed direction, leading her off down a side street. As they walked along it she could see his pace slowing. _Those bursts of energy don't last forever, John, do they?_ she thought to herself. After about ten minutes they reached the hotel. Megan eyed it with a slight frown.

"Umm, John. This place has three Michelin stars. I don't think I can afford it."

He smirked cheerfully at her. "My treat, Meg."

Oh, hell. "No. I mean. Thanks for your, um, offer, but-"

"Separate rooms, Meg." The smirk disappeared, replaced with a serious expression. "I appreciate you being here. Really. And since I kind of dragged you all this way… please let me pay."

She considered this. "Well… okay."

They entered and before long were being conducted up to their rooms. Megan didn't bother unpacking. Within two minutes there was a tap at her door and John was there waiting for her.

The hotel was pretty close to the town centre and the Mantegna House, which was apparently a minor tourist attraction in its own right. They turned their steps towards it. By her side she could feel John's tension rising, almost like a tiny quiver in him. They rounded a last corner and there it was - a tall brick structure, almost a perfect cube, with only a few windows looking out onto the street. It occupied a corner site: a main street entrance in one dusky orange brick wall led to a downstairs exhibition space, while around the side there was another much more discreet door. John led the way to the smaller door. When they got there they stood for a moment, examining it. An ordinary brown metal door with a push button beside it. John drew himself up, grabbed her hand, and pushed firmly on the door bell.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Megan found she was holding her breath as they waited for someone to answer the door. She was starting to get dizzy, whether from oxygen deprivation or from the sheer tension of the moment, when there was a sound of movement from behind the door. With a rattle of the lock, it opened.

A woman with straight, very red hair stood there. When she saw John her eyes grew very wide. "Detective- umm… _John?_ "

John was smiling just a little, but it was an anxious smile. "Hello, Grace. Umm… is Harold in?"

"Well… yes, yes he is." Grace stood in the door way. "He's uh, he's… he's upstairs. Reading." A little half-smile accompanied this: what else would Harold be doing, she seemed to be saying.

"May we come up?" prompted Megan.

"Oh, yes. Yes of course." Grace stood aside to let them in.

Inside the street door was a narrow flight of stairs which led up three floors to the upstairs apartment. They emerged into a wide, sunny room overlooking the circular courtyard around which the house had been built. Harold was sitting in an armchair over by the window. He looked up as they entered, closing his book. He was in the act of putting it aside when he registered John's presence. He froze in his seat, the book still in his trembling hand.

He seemed completely lost for words for a full thirty seconds. John paced towards him. "Harold," he said softly.

There was still no reply from Finch. Finally, wordlessly, he gestured for John to take a seat. Grace pulled a third chair forward for Megan, and perched herself on the arm of Harold's armchair.

At last Harold spoke. "Well, John. You've rendered me speechless before, but I confess that this time..." he seemed unsure whether to laugh or cry. There were certainly tears in his eyes, but the the smile on his face was one of the most heartfelt that Megan had ever seen.

John's face was such a mix of emotions it was hard to pick what was uppermost: he looked joyful and worried and hopeful and afraid all at the same time. "I'm just sorry it took so long to find you, Harold," he said quietly. He gestured at his head. "I got pretty banged up. Some skull fractures, among other things. I, uh, lost my memory for a while there."

"Oh," said Harold faintly. "Oh, I'm so sorry." He stopped, seemingly unable to think of what to say next. He raised his hand and shakily adjusted his glasses. "My hands," he explained apologetically. "Ever since that day they haven't stopped shaking. The doctor thinks it's psychosomatic." He gave an exasperated grimace. "I can't type or use a computer at all right now unless I use voice activation, which isn't much good for anything, mm, complex."

"Yeah, well, it's taken a while to get back on my feet myself. But I'm here now," said John. He seemed about to reach out and touch Harold's shoulder, but apparently thought better of it.

"Indeed you are, Mr Reese." A genuine smile lit Harold's face for a scant second.

"Harold, I'm mostly better now. But everything that happened… there are gaps. I, please, can you tell me..." John's voice trailed off. He cleared his throat and tried again. "For a long time I only had bits and pieces of my past. Most of it's come back now. I can remember us working together, saving people. And now I know why we started doing it all. But there's still one thing I just can't get." There was a desperate appeal in his eyes. "Harold, how did we get like this? The AI war – we won, but I don't remember how. What happened?"

Harold gave a short laugh. " _You_ happened, Mr Reese."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

"When we went to destroy Samaritan - the last copy of Samaritan - we went first to the Federal Reserve, where the air gapped servers were being kept in the vault, of all places," said Finch softly. "One of the guards shot me – here, in the abdomen." He indicated the spot. "I succeeded in destroying the Samaritan software on the servers, but one final copy made it out and uploaded itself to a satellite. I had to get to the only antenna in New York which could be used to get a copy of The Machine up there to destroy Samaritan. Since our adversary was well aware of this possibility, it had... arranged... the missile strike to destroy the antenna. I locked you in the Federal Reserve vault to keep you safe and set off on my suicide mission by myself. It was only logical – I was already injured, possibly fatally, while you were unharmed."

Megan could see tears in Harold's eyes. "I should have known you were unstoppable, John," he continued. "I got up to the rooftop only to discover that you and The Machine had conspired against me. I was on the wrong roof. You were up on the right one, a completely different building and all I could do was watch as my dearest friend gave his life for me."

John was watching Harold with the closest attention.

"The only thing which has given me the slightest comfort these last few months is the smile you gave me from up there," Harold went on. "You told me that you were going to pay me back all at once, as though there was some debt involved. There never was, John. _Never_. But you were completely serene. I knew you had made a positive choice – not driven by the demons of your past, or, or guilt for old sins. That you were exactly where you wanted to be. If... if you had to, to, to die..." Finch's voice broke and he finished in a whisper "...I'm glad it was on your own terms."

Grace put a comforting hand on Harold's shoulder. "How did you survive, John?" she asked quietly.

He was quiet a moment and then said, "My Dad told my Mom once, that when he was in 'Nam the medics could work wonders. If you were alive when they got to you, or only a little bit dead, you were going to survive, he said." He looked up at Grace. "I was only a little bit dead when they got to me, I guess."

Harold looked up at Megan. He took his glasses off and dried them with his handkerchief. "I...we...owe you a great debt, Dr Tillman."

"Actually, much as I would like to take the credit, I wasn't John's doctor," she admitted. "He had an amazing team looking after him, though."

"Don't sell yourself short, Meg," John said, looking straight at her for the first time since they'd arrived. "I wouldn't be here except for you." She wasn't quite sure what she was seeing in those blue eyes.

Confused, she looked away. Grace, watching the byplay, rose and offered them coffee, which they accepted. After a few minutes she arrived back bearing three coffees and a sencha green tea; Megan rose to help pass them around. It seemed strange to be doing something so normal. Saving the world from a runaway ASI, and oh yes, cream no sugar.

Finch's tea was served in a travel mug in view of his shaky hands, but as he bore it to his lips he frowned a little.

"Too hot?" asked Grace, watching him.

"No, no. It's nothing," Harold assured her.

"What do you do these days, Harold?" asked John.

"Read, mostly. I've been researching the Gonzaga dynasty, the rulers of Mantova during the Renaissance. They wanted to turn this place into a centre for the arts and letters, and they succeeded. A colourful family, though. Well worth the time spent getting to know them."

"So… had you considered… going back into business?" Megan could see the subtle tension which crept into John's posture as he asked the question.

There was a very long silence as Finch sipped his tea. "You know," he said at last, "our whole enterprise… was never something I planned. It simply happened, step by step. I wanted to stop terrorism. I never predicted that the Machine would start picking up on the irrelevant numbers. And as you know, I resisted the idea of saving those people for a long time." His lips tightened as he said this. "I was wrong, of course. And you know my regrets about that. But it seems to me now that… that the tide of affairs has passed me by. I have done my part. If The Machine has indeed recruited other teams as you told me just before… the end, and if Ms Shaw and Fusco are still there… I think at last I can lay my burden down."

Beside Megan, Grace let out a stealthy sigh.

John gave a tiny nod to this.

"You, though, John – what do you plan to do once your recovery is complete?" Finch was gazing at John over the rim of his mug.

"I…. I don't know," he confessed.

"You have enough money to retire, you know. Or if you don't, it wouldn't be hard to arrange to make it so. I do owe you my life, after all."

John looked down into his own coffee cup. "Thanks, Finch," he said softly. "I'll think about it."

POI*POI*POI*POI*

Back at the hotel, Megan decided to tackle her unpacking. As she moved around her room there was a tap at the door. "Come in, John!" she called.

He poked his head around the door with a tentative smile and then inserted himself into the room, closing the door gently behind him.

"So," said Megan.

"So," he agreed.

There was a silence. She finished hanging some clothes in the closet and sat down cross-legged on the bed. He pulled an armchair around to face her.

"What you expected?" she asked.

He spread his hands. "I didn't know what to expect."

"Fusco told me you must have saved the world on that roof top," she said. "Looks like he was right."

He gave an embarrassed shrug.

"Question is, what do heroes do when there's no more hero-ing that needs doing," Megan continued.

"There's always bad guys who need taking down," he said softly.

"Yeah, but does it have to be you that does that?" she shot back at him.

He gave another shrug. "Somebody has to."

"Hey. Don't you get up on your high horse. There are people who do that stuff. Every day. I see 'em often enough in the ER, just doing their jobs. People like Lionel."

"You think I should go off and become a cop?" He was looking annoyed.

"Not necessarily," she said. "But maybe you could be teaching them some of your skills. Maybe there are some people out there who might end up owing their lives to you because you taught some cop what they needed to get out of a bad situation. Think about that."

"Huh." He didn't look at all convinced. "Listen, Meg. I didn't come in here to talk about this. I was just wondering if you'd like to come out to dinner with me."

She eyed him. "You're asking me on a date?"

He looked almost shy. "Well.. yeah. I guess so."

Her brows rose. "Okay. Guess I'll have to find something nice to wear, then." There was a silence. "That was your signal to leave for a while, John," she prompted.

"Oh. Yeah. Okay." With another tentative smile he was gone.

To be continued….


	15. Chapter 15

**Tabula Rasa**

Actually Megan had very few choices when it came to what to wear out on a date with John Reese. One, in fact – the little black dress she'd shoved into her bag during her frantic five-minute packing frenzy back in New York while Fusco waited in his cruiser downstairs. It needed a good press, which the concierge arranged for her when she called down to the desk. Apart from that, she was good to go.

She was glad to have John to herself for the evening. By some unspoken agreement neither he nor Harold seemed interested in hanging out together just yet. She suspected that they both needed time to process the events of the afternoon.

When he knocked at her door to collect her, she could see that he too had had the hotel work some magic: white shirt and black suit were both fresh and pressed. He offered her his arm, and she took it without hesitation. They strolled down the street in the direction of the piazza, enjoying the sights and sounds of an Italian town at dusk: the smell of people's evening meals cooking, the putt-putt-putt of a Vespa scooter easing past them, quiet conversation and bursts of laughter from a restaurant.

After a little while they found a place they both liked the look of. There were tables out back, in a little enclosed courtyard with some kind of vine with sweet-smelling flowers rambling over the walls. Neither had spoken much since they'd left the hotel, and so it was Megan who broke the silence as they nibbled bread sticks and considered their orders.

"When do you want to head back to New York?"

He gave one of his little shrugs. "Not too sure. I'd like to leave it at least another few days, if that's okay. But if you need to get back there... I wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your job, Meg."

"Oh, I wasn't trying to rush you," she said quickly. "I got two weeks of leave out of Jeff, so we've got plenty of time."

"You want to stay?" he said, eyebrows rising.

"Umm… if it's okay with you." She began to feel flustered. "I mean, you're paying for the room and-"

"No, no, it's not that at all. I just thought that now we found Finch you might not be interested any more." His mouth shut abruptly on something else he was about to say, and he glanced down at his menu.

"Interested? Sure I'm interested." She ran her eye down her own menu. There was silence between them for a moment.

"What do you think you'll do back in New York?" she asked after a while.

He sighed. "I have no idea." After a moment he added, "When Finch first offered me a job he said I needed a purpose."

"And that purpose was…?" she asked.

"Saving people. I always wanted to save people, even when I was just a kid. Wanted to put down the bad guys. Trouble is… I'm not sure I can any more."

"You still seem to be able to shoot pretty well," she found herself saying, against her better judgement.

"Yeah. But the other stuff. It's not just the lack of energy, I know that'll pass. It's more like… like an athlete who's performed at their absolute peak, you know? And that peak performance, it's gone. And I know I'll never get it back." He looked genuinely sad at this.

At that moment the waiter appeared for their orders; once they had made their choices he disappeared and Megan said "So what's your purpose now?"

"That's the million-dollar question, Meg," he sighed.

"Well, you want to know what I think?" She gazed challengingly at him. "I don't think your purpose has changed. You're still here to save people."

"But, Meg, I can't any more! No more numbers from The Machine, no more Finch, no more-"

"No, listen to me, John. All this time, you've been being a hero. Arriving in the nick of time to save someone's life, right?"

"Yeah."

"What about those firefighters who arrived just in the nick of time to save you before you bled out up on that building. Heroes?"

"Yeah, of course-"

"And Campion, self-satisfied prick that he is, spent hours stabilising you so cardio-thoracic and neuro and the rest could get their hands on you: hero?"

"Yeah, I see where you're going with this, Meg, but it's not the same-"

"Yes it is! Look, John, you saved people. Hundreds of 'em. But what you were doing, it was just like the tip of the iceberg. There were a whole lot of us doing _exactly_ what you were doing all along. Just in a slightly different way."

He was shaking his head. "You may be right, Meg. But I can't do those things. I was a killer, remember? Then I was a saviour. But now, I'm just not sure what I am."

Their cannelloni arrived, and they both began to tuck in.

"We all save people, John. Not just doctors or police, either," said Megan around her food. "Teachers and librarians and bus drivers and janitors – anyone at all who goes out of their way to help someone out. And you know what else? We all save each other. You're on the receiving end this week? Don't worry. Next week you'll get your chance again. Are you telling me you're too proud to just step down into the mud and do what the rest of us have been doing all this time?"

"But Meg, what if someone came along and told you you couldn't be a doctor any more? How would that feel?"

"It'd be hard," she said honestly. "It's hard to give up something that's part of you. Like when someone made me give up getting what I thought was justice for my sister. Remember that?"

He looked away.

"You said I'd get a new start. That's what you've got now." She stabbed the last remaining piece of pasta with her fork and lifted it to her mouth.

He concentrated on mopping up the last of the pasta sauce from his plate. "That still leaves me wondering what to do with myself. Can't quite see myself as a janitor or bus driver. Or a librarian, for that matter."

"Okay, so what about weapons and tactics instructor at the Police Academy? Riley did that, right? Like I said earlier, at the hotel, maybe someone will come to owe their life to someone you trained. You could save a whole lotta people that way, John. Or, or teaching self defence classes. Or working with kids, stopping them falling in with the gangs. Your life's not over yet, John Reese. There's lots you could give to the world before your own number's up."

"Hm. Well, thanks for the pep talk, Doc." He looked mildly ironic as he said this, and she blushed. Had she gone too far with the rousing inspirational stuff?

The wait staff whisked their plates away and replaced them with their main courses. For a while they didn't speak much, just concentrated on the food. After dessert and coffee, John looked up at her with a smile. "Time to go back?"

"Yeah, okay," she said, rising to her feet.

It was a warm night, and they didn't feel in any great need to hurry back. They strolled along the street, quieter now. A baby cried from an apartment high up above them. Her shoulder brushed against John's sleeve as she negotiated an uneven patch in the roadway. She felt his arm reach around to lie warm and heavy across her shoulders. She glanced up at his face. He was staring straight ahead, carefully not looking at her. After a moment's thought she slid her own arm around his waist, pulling their hips side by side. He let out a sigh.

"That was really slick, John," she teased. "Did you perfect that technique in high school?"

His smile was just a little chagrined. "Actually, yes."

And so they walked back to the hotel, and in through the main entrance, and then reached their rooms. He took his arm away, leaving a cold gap. "Well, time to say good night, I guess."

"Does it have to be?"

His brows flicked up and he swallowed. "Only if you want it to, Meg."

"Yeah. Well, I'm not sure I do want it to," she confessed as she got her key out to unlock her door.

"Listen, I don't want anything… you don't want, okay?" He stepped back a pace. "If you want me to come in your room, you have to ask me. And, and anything else you want- it's just you've been such a great friend to me, Meg. Such a good friend. And I don't want to wreck that. I don't want to lose that. So, so, so-"

"Oh, shut up," she said, pulling him through the doorway.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

When they arrived at the Mantegna House the next day it was Harold who opened the door. He gave them a long look as they entered. "John, Megan – go up, there's something Grace wants to show you." They climbed the stairs and emerged into the big living area. Grace had set up a display easel near the big window looking out onto the courtyard.

"Oh, wow," said Megan. It was a watercolour portrait of John. He was sitting, clad in his black suit, on a park bench in New York. One foot in a perfectly shined shoe was propped on his knee as he sat leaning back at ease. Tall buildings rose off behind him in the distance, but closer at hand there was green grass and spring flowers blooming. His expression was one of amusement, as though he was just about to deliver some one-liner.

John himself seemed bowled over by it. "Grace – how, how did you do this?"

Grace gave him an amused smile. "I'm an artist, John," she said. "It's what I do."

"She painted it for me, John." said Finch, coming into the room behind them. "It was… helpful, during those first few weeks."

"I'm honoured," said John sincerely.

They seated themselves around a low coffee table, and Grace brought out refreshments. She passed Harold his tea in its travel mug, pausing to give him a hard look. "Your hands, Harold – they don't seem so bad today."

"No. No, they aren't," he agreed as he raised his tea to his lips. "I thought they seemed better yesterday, when John and Megan arrived. I wasn't quite sure then, but now..."

"So if you could go back to using computers, Finch – would that change anything?" John asked.

Harold smiled into his cup. "I'm really not at all sure it would, John."

Megan and Grace exchanged smiles.

POI*POI*POI*POI*

That night Reese lay awake in the hotel room in Mantova. The next day he and Meg were taking the train back to Rome, and then flying home to New York. Together. With the slight feeling of shock which always accompanied them, another memory resurfaced.

 _Another rooftop: a parking structure this time. Darkness. Headlights._

" _Time to come home, John. Slate's been wiped clean."_

" _You know that'll never happen."_

He lay there in the dark, the sleeping woman at his side, and considered it all. What if you really could wipe the slate clean? Maybe dying in a hail of bullets and a missile strike was as close as anyone ever got to that. Not many people got a second chance after something like that. Putting it mildly. _I really did actually save the world._ _Always w_ _anted to save everyone. And_ _finally did it_ _._

It would be pretty hard to top that, he had to admit to himself. Maybe it was time to stop trying. Maybe when he – they – got back to New York he could try something new, like Meg had urged him. His lips curved upwards in the darkness of the hotel room. Even if there were no numbers to save, life might have other compensations for a retired hero.

The End.

(Shameless self-promotion here… if you want more adventures from John in a slightly AU POI world – Carter lives – take a look at my series which starts with "Meetings". Although I've finished with this particular story, John Reese is still very much alive in my imagination and I'm sure there will be more stories featuring him for quite a while yet!)


End file.
